cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/138875
AMD's Ryzen 8000-series CPUs, based on the new Zen 5 microarchitecture, have reached a crucial point on their way to market, with major industry benchmarking utility AIDA64 now recognizing the architecture. The update came from FireWire's latest release notes for the AIDA64 tool, a popular system health and performance evaluation software among professionals and PC enthusiasts. FireWire would have needed detailed information from AMD to implement this preliminary support for Zen 5.
However, this does not necessarily give an exact timeline for when the Zen 5 architecture will hit the market in the form of AMD Ryzen 8000-series desktop processors. AIDA64's preliminary support for Intel's Meteor Lake processors was introduced back in 2021, and these chips are not expected to launch until later this year. According to AMD's roadmap, the release of the Ryzen 8000-series is set for 2024, indicating that the company is on track with its launch plan.
FireWire's release notes also show enhanced support for Intel's upcoming processor generations: Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake. Lunar Lake, with its new microarchitecture, is expected to be released late in 2024 or early in 2025. The upcoming 14th-gen Raptor Lake refresh and Meteor Lake chips, both under the 14th-gen label and expected to launch later this year, will stick with Intel's current hybrid performance-efficiency core design.
Arrow Lake, expected in 2024 and set to be built on TSMC's 3nm process node, has reportedly been dealing with delays. This is not unusual for TSMC, which manufactures the processor wafers for numerous tech giants including AMD, Nvidia, and Apple. With the 3nm node predicted to be highly popular, production schedules are likely to be tight.
AMD's Zen 5 will also be utilizing TSMC's 3nm node, which could be a double-edged sword for the company. Intel secured a significant portion of 3nm production capacity in 2021, ostensibly for an Arc GPU and several server chips. If Intel substitutes Arrow Lake chips into this capacity, it is likely to have a larger stock of its chips at the launch of Arrow Lake compared to AMD's stock of 3nm Zen 5 chips. However, it appears that AMD placed orders for Zen 5 chips before Intel, which means Zen 5 chips may roll off the production line before Intel's Arrow Lake chips. Whether AMD's first-to-market advantage will result in a more successful launch, as seen with the previous Zen 4, remains to be seen.
While true that the x nm nomenclature doesn't match physical feature size anymore, it's definitely not just marketing bs. The process nodes are very significant and very (very) challenging technological steps, that yield power efficiency gains in the dozens of % usually.
No doubt the advancements are significant, but "3nm" as a label is just deceptive.
Nothing in the node relates to that number, as far as I can tell, and the gate pitch, which used to be what that number meant, is in the realm of 40-45nm.