AMD’s Zen 3 processors will reportedly offer a 20% boost in integer performance over Zen 2
AMD’s Zen 3 processors will reportedly offer a 20% boost in integer performance over Zen 2
We already know a lot about AMD’s Zen 3 architecture. Since October 2019 we have been discussing Zen 3’s unified L3 cache, and early in May, it came to light that Vermeer (Zen 3 Ryzen) engineering samples offered higher clock speeds than their Zen 2/Ryzen 3000 series counterparts. Â
Now, sources at AdoredTV have claimed that AMD’s Zen 3 architecture will focus on Integer performance, offering an overall IPC boost of between 10% and 15%. In some workloads, AMD’s Zen 3 processors were said to offer 20% more integer performance, suggesting that AMD’s Zen 3 processors will feature both clock speed improvements and increased IPC (Instructions Per Cycle).Â
With Milan, AMD’s Zen 3 EPYC processors, single-threaded integer performance is said to be increased by 20%, 32-core Integer performance is reported to be up 20% and 64-core Integer performance is said to be up by 15%. While it is strange that this performance increase trends downwards as core utilisation increases, this could be a sign that 3rd Gen EPYC will have more aggressive boost clock speeds during single-threaded and more lightly threaded workloads. Another hypothesis is that multi-threaded performance may be limited by AMD’s inter-core communication bandwidth or some other factor. Â
If this information is legitimate, Zen 3 could be a game-changing architecture for AMD, literally. With a unified L3 cache, higher core clock speeds and boosted integer performance, AMD’s gaming performance will likely increase significantly with Zen 3. Gaming remains as one of Intel’s key advantages in the enthusiast PC market, and Zen 3 is a real opportunity for AMD to take that away from them.Â
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While the jump to Zen 3 is unlikely to deliver the same kind of inter-generational leap as Zen to Zen 2, the move to Zen 3 will be significant. With Zen 3, it looks like AMD will be solving many of the performance issues which have hampered their Zen architecture from the beginning. This change comes in the form of removed (or heavily-reduced) inter-CCX latencies, and a unified L3 cache structure on each Zen chiplet.Â
Zen 2 was a turning point for AMD, and Zen 3 is AMD’s opportunity to take an undeniable leadership position within the x86 CPU market. That said, Intel has its own next-generation products in the works, with Tiger Lake in the laptop space, Rocket Lake for the desktop market and incoming Ice Lake and Cooper Lake products for the server market.Â
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