Innovative Design

“Zen” is our hybrid, multi-chip architecture that enables AMD to decouple innovation paths and deliver consistently innovative, high-performance products. With “Zen,” AMD can deliver leadership performance, scalability, and efficiency across a broad spectrum of desktop, server, and mobile processors for both consumer and commercial clients. 

Benefits

Performance

With a core engine that supports simultaneous multi-threading for future-looking workloads; a leading-edge cache system and neural-net prediction, to help lower effective latency; a sharp eye on efficiency, for impressive performance-per-watt leadership, “Zen” is a scalable architecture that can be continuously improved. 

Scalability

AMD employed a radical new idea for x86 processors: chiplets. Instead of building larger monolithic dies, AMD invested in a strategy to use processor building blocks called chiplets. Each chiplet houses a number of “Zen”-based cores, and more chiplets can be added to a package to create a higher performance model processor.  

Efficiency 

At AMD, our core design is an undertaking of continuous optimization. Decoupling our core and I/O development processes enabled us to shrink the CPU die and optimize variants for performance or energy efficiency. The placement of every transistor and the allocation of every microwatt of power from processor to platform demonstrates the AMD commitment to efficiency.

Generations

AMD Ryzen™
Desktop Processor AMD Ryzen 1000 AMD Ryzen 3000 AMD Ryzen 5000 AMD Ryzen 7000/8000 AMD Ryzen 9000
Core Architecture “Zen” “Zen 2” “Zen 3” “Zen 4” “Zen 5”
CPU Process Technology 14nm 7nm 7nm 5nm/4nm 4nm
IPC Improvement Over Prior Generation N/A ~15%2 ~19%3 ~13%1 ~16%10
AMD EPYC™
Product AMD EPYC 7001 AMD EPYC 7002 AMD EPYC 7003 AMD EPYC 9004, 8004 AMD EPYC 9005
Core Architecture “Zen” “Zen 2” “Zen 3” “Zen 4” and “Zen 4c” “Zen 5” and “Zen 5c”
CPU Process Technology 14nm 7nm 7nm 5nm 4/3 nm
IPC Improvement Over Prior Generation N/A ~24%4 ~19%5 ~14%6 ~37% (ML/HPC)
~17% (Enterprise)11

Evolution of “Zen” Architecture

The historic “Zen” architecture shifted the design approach to processors and represented an unimaginable uplift over previous AMD products. The first AMD Ryzen™ processors made their way to market in 2017, transforming gaming, productivity, and creativity. “Zen” architecture powers every AMD processor available today, from AMD Ryzen™ in consumer desktop and mobile processors, to AMD EPYC™ for servers, and AMD Threadripper™ for workstations. It all started with “Zen.”

“Zen 5” Architecture

Cutting-edge 4nm manufacturing technology enables the world’s most powerful – and most efficient – desktop processor lineup with AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processors. Improvements include Improved branch prediction accuracy and latency; higher throughput with wider pipelines and vectors; and deeper window size across design for more parallelism. As a result, single-threaded IPC is increased by about ~16% gen-over-gen.

AMD EPYC™ 9005 Processors, the latest EPYC generation with double-digit IPC performance uplift over their predecessors11, leverage the innovative "Zen5" core architecture for exceptional efficiency in data center, cloud and AI workloads. Catering to diverse business needs, they offer competitive cost points, x86 compatibility, and extensive functionality across various core counts, frequencies, cache capacities, and TDP levels.

"Zen 5" White Paper
“Zen 4” Architecture

AMD Ryzen created on leading 5nm manufacturing technology, AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors boast a maximum clock speed up to an impressive 5.7 GHz7. Thanks to major redesigns of key portions of the chip like the front end, execution engine, load/store hierarchy, and a generationally-doubled L2 cache on each core, the chip can deliver up to a 13% IPC increase over its predecessor. When combined with the 800 MHz clock increase over last gen, this can add up to 29% more single-thread performance.

4th Generation AMD EPYC processors include up to 128 “Zen 4” or “Zen 4c” cores with exceptional memory bandwidth and capacity.  The innovative AMD chiplet architecture enables high performance, energy-efficient solutions optimized for different computing needs. These cores represent a significant advancement from the last generation, with new support for highly complex machine learning and inferencing applications.

Zen 4 White Paper
“Zen 3”

“Zen 3” debuted in AMD Ryzen 5000 Series desktop processors and increased the maximum clock speed to 4.9 GHz. This comprehensive design overhaul delivered a further 19% IPC. It also transitioned to a new "unified complex" design which dramatically reduced core-to-core and core-to-cache latencies. Latency-sensitive tasks like PC gaming especially benefited from this change, as tasks now have direct access to twice as much L3 cache versus "Zen 2."

“Zen 3+” transitioned to the newer 6nm manufacturing process. Focused on mobile users, efficiency was a strong focus, along with delivering high performance and performance-per-watt. This manifested in the AMD Ryzen 6000 Series processors for mobile. Laptops with these processors have demonstrated up to 29 hours of video playback on battery.8 In addition, they deliver exceptional performance in thin and light laptops.

“Zen 2”

The Ryzen 3000 Series desktop processors benefited from a major core redesign, doubling up the L3 cache capacity (up to 32MB), floating point throughput (to 256-bit), OpCache capacity (to 4K), and Infinity Fabric bandwidth (to 512-bit). It also featured a new TAGE branch predictor. All of these improvements contributed to a very substantial 15% IPC increase, and with these processors benefitting from the new 7nm manufacturing node, maximum clock speeds climbed to 4.7 GHz. 

“Zen”

The original launch of the "Zen” architecture in the Ryzen 1000 Series desktop processors featured clock speeds up to 4 GHz, and were manufactured on the 14nm manufacturing node. This was followed the next year with the Ryzen 2000 Series featuring updated “Zen+” architecture, which was die-shrunk to the 12nm node and delivered higher clock speeds with about 3% higher IPC (instructions per clock) compared to its predecessor. Despite this modest increase, it delivered up to 15% higher gaming performance due to updates like Precision Boost 2 and XFR 2, thanks in part to a clock speed increase up to 4.3 GHz.

Portfolio

AMD Ryzen Processors for Desktops

For incredible gaming, professional-grade productivity, and magical AI experiences.

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AMD Ryzen Processors for Premium Laptops

Advance your experience with the ultimate processor for laptops.

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AMD EPYC Processors

Advancing AI, Cloud, and Enterprise data centers with leadership performance and efficiency

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Footnotes
  1. Max boost for AMD Ryzen processors is the maximum frequency achievable by a single core on the processor running a bursty single-threaded workload. Max boost will vary based on several factors, including, but not limited to: thermal paste; system cooling; motherboard design and BIOS; the latest AMD chipset driver; and the latest OS updates. GD-150  
  2. AMD "Zen 2" CPU-based system scored an estimated 15% higher than previous generation AMD “Zen” based system using estimated SPECint®_base2006 results. SPEC and SPECint are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. See www.spec.org. GD-141 
  3. Testing by AMD performance labs as of 09/01/2020. IPC evaluated with a selection of 25 workloads running at a locked 4GHz frequency on 8-core "Zen 2" Ryzen 7 3800XT and "Zen 3" Ryzen 7 5800X desktop processors configured with Windows® 10, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (451.77), Samsung 860 Pro SSD, and 2x8GB DDR4-3600. Results may vary. R5K-003 
  4. Based on AMD internal testing, average per thread performance improvement at ISO-frequency on a 32-core, 64-thread, 2nd generation AMD EPYC™ platform as compared to 32-core 64-thread 1st generation AMD EPYC™ platform measured on a selected set of workloads including sub-components of SPEC CPU® 2017_int and representative server workloads. SPEC® and SPEC CPU® are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Learn more at www.spec.org. ROM-236 
  5. Based on AMD internal testing as of 02/1/2021, average performance improvement at ISO-frequency on an AMD EPYC™ 72F3 (8C/8T, 3.7GHz) compared to an AMD EPYC™ 7F32 (8C/8T, 3.7GHz), per-core, single thread, using a select set of workloads including SPECrate®2017_int_base, SPECrate®2017_fp_base, and representative server workloads. SPEC® and SPECrate® are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Learn more at spec.org. MLN-003 
  6. EPYC-038: Based on AMD internal testing as of 09/19/2022, geomean performance improvement at the same fixed-frequency on a 4th Gen AMD EPYC™ 9554 CPU compared to a 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ 7763 CPU using a select set of workloads (33) including est. SPECrate®2017_int_base, est. SPECrate®2017_fp_base, and representative server workloads. SPEC® and SPECrate® are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Learn more at spec.org. 
  7. Max boost for AMD Ryzen processors is the maximum frequency achievable by a single core on the processor running a bursty single-threaded workload. Max boost will vary based on several factors, including, but not limited to: thermal paste; system cooling; motherboard design and BIOS; the latest AMD chipset driver; and the latest OS updates. GD-150
  8. See results: https://results.bapco.com/results/benchmark/MobileMark_2018
  9. Based on testing by AMD Labs as of 4/11/22. Battery life evaluated in hours of continuous 1080p local video playback with a HP Elitebook 865 G9 configured with an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U processor with Radeon 680M graphics, 76 WHr battery, 150 nit screen brightness, 256GB HDD, 8GB memory, Win 10 Pro, video resolution of 1920 x 1200 x 60 Hz and the power slider set to "better battery." Actual battery life will vary based on several factors, including, but not limited to: product configuration and usage, software, operating conditions, wireless functionality, power management settings, screen brightness and other factors. The maximum capacity of the battery will naturally decrease with time and use. RMP-39
  10. Testing as of May 2024 by AMD Performance labs. "Zen 5" system configured with: Ryzen 9 9950X GIGABYTE X670E AORUS MASTER motherboard, Balanced, DDR5-6000, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, VBS=ON, SAM=ON, KRACKENX63 vs. "Zen 4" system configured with: Ryzen 7 7700X, ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E motherboard, Balanced, DDR5-6000, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, VBS=ON, SAM=ON, KRAKENX62 {FixedFrequency=4.0 GHz}. Applications tested include: Handbrake, League of Legends, FarCry 6, Puget Adobe Premiere Pro, 3DMark Physics, Kraken, Blender, Cinebench (n-thread), Geekbench, Octane, Speedometer, and WebXPRT. System manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. GNR-03
  11. 9xx5-001: Based on AMD internal testing as of 9/10/2024, geomean performance improvement (IPC) at fixed-frequency.
    - 5th Gen EPYC CPU Enterprise and Cloud Server Workloads generational IPC Uplift of 1.170x  (geomean) using a select set of 36 workloads and is the geomean of estimated scores for total and all subsets of SPECrate®2017_int_base (geomean ), estimated scores for total and all subsets of SPECrate®2017_fp_base (geomean), scores for Server Side Java multi instance max ops/sec,   representative Cloud Server workloads (geomean), and representative Enterprise server workloads (geomean).
    “Genoa” Config (all NPS1): EPYC 9654 BIOS TQZ1005D 12c12t (1c1t/CCD in 12+1), FF 3GHz, 12x DDR5-4800 (2Rx4 64GB), 32Gbps xGMI;
    “Turin” config (all NPS1): EPYC 9V45    BIOS RVOT1000F 12c12t (1c1t/CCD in 12+1), FF 3GHz, 12x DDR5-6000 (2Rx4 64GB), 32Gbps xGMI
    Utilizing Performance Determinism and the Performance governor on Ubuntu® 22.04 w/ 6.8.0-40-generic kernel OS for all workloads.
    - 5th Gen EPYC generational ML/HPC Server Workloads IPC Uplift of 1.369x (geomean) using a select set of 24 workloads and is the geomean of representative ML Server Workloads (geomean), and representative HPC Server Workloads (geomean). “Genoa Config (all NPS1) “Genoa” config: EPYC 9654 BIOS TQZ1005D 12c12t (1c1t/CCD in 12+1), FF 3GHz, 12x DDR5-4800 (2Rx4 64GB), 32Gbps xGMI;
    “Turin” config (all NPS1):   EPYC 9V45 BIOS RVOT1000F 12c12t (1c1t/CCD in 12+1), FF 3GHz, 12x DDR5-6000 (2Rx4 64GB), 32Gbps xGMI
    Utilizing Performance Determinism and the Performance governor on Ubuntu 22.04 w/ 6.8.0-40-generic kernel OS for all workloads except LAMMPS, HPCG, NAMD, OpenFOAM, Gromacs  which utilize 24.04 w/ 6.8.0-40-generic kernel.
    SPEC® and SPECrate® are registered trademarks for Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Learn more at spec.org.