AMD Zen 6 to get “sea of wires” interconnect upgrade?
One of Zen 6’s biggest upgrades is already present in Strix Halo
High-Yield has been busy testing the AMD Ryzen AI Max CPU on his ASUS ROG FLOW Z13 notebook, and its unique chiplet-interconnect gives us a glimpse into the future of AMD and Zen. AMD’s next-generation Zen 6 CPUs will feature a “sea of wires” interconnect upgrade, and it could be transformative for AMD’s future CPUs.
Essentially, AMD is modifying the connection between its CPU and I/O dies. AMD’s from a SERDES interconnect to something more complex. This means that AMD needs to use newer, more complex packaging technologies. The benefit of this is that AMD’s chiplets can act a lot more like monolithic pieces of silicon.
(Image from High Yield)
Latency is king!
AMD’s new interconnect is more expensive, but it has three significant benefits. For starters, it decreases the power cost of transferring bytes of data from one chip to another. High Yield estimates that this reduces the power draw of this action by around 90%. This power saving will make AMD’s future CPUs more efficient, which is great news for mobile and enterprise-grade CPUs.
This new interconnect also significantly increases the bandwidth available on AMD’s CPU to I/O die interconnect. This can allow each CPU chiplet of AMD’s latest CPUs to access more memory bandwidth and become less constrained by interconnect speed. Furthermore, AMD’s new interconnect should result in reduced latencies, decreasing memory latencies for new Ryzen/EPYC CPUs. This should benefit all memory-sensitive workloads, including gaming workloads.
AMD’s new interconnect could deliver increased multi-threaded CPU performance in multi-CCD CPU designs and improve the memory performance of all AMD Ryzen/EPYC CPUs. This is good news for all users. While the new interconnect will be more expensive, its improvements are worth the cost.
(Image from High Yield)
Zen 6 will transform AMD with its “sea of wires” upgrade
AMD’s “sea of wires” interconnect upgrade is not a hypothetical. This upgrade is already available in AMD’s Ryzen AI MAX 300 series CPUs (Also known as Strix Halo). These benefits help AMD’s Strix Halo CPUs deliver their stellar performance. With Zen 6, this upgrade will be utilised across a broader portion of AMD’s Ryzen CPU lineup, as well as with new EPYC CPUs.
Leaks about AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs have discussed this interconnect upgrade for a while. Now, it is clear that this upgrade is real. It’s already available with some Zen 5 CPUs, and its benefits are obvious. While it remains to be seen if Zen 6 will feature the exact same interconnect as Strix Halo, you can bet that Zen 6 will have a new/faster chiplet interface.
You can join the discussion on AMD’s “Sea of Wires” interconnect upgrade for Zen 6 CPUs on the OC3D Forums.
