Microchip manufacturer AMD recently announced both good and bad news for users who are patiently waiting for the AMD Zen products. The good news: AMD announced that Zen showed a "landmark increase" in terms of processor performance after conducting several tests. The bad news: the first batch of AMD Zen chips expected to be released later this year were delayed until the early part of 2017.
Based on what AMD recently announced, many tech experts are convinced that the company might have found the recipe take the market share it had lost over its closest rival, Intel. AMD revealed the new details about the Zen architecture during a special event in San Francisco held just a couple of miles from where Intel is also holding its annual developer forum.
AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su said that the Zen architecture will lay the foundation for the company's new family of products. AMD is rumored to unveil more details about the current development status of its Zen products at the Hot Chips symposium in Cupertino scheduled next week.
During AMD's presentation, the company claimed that its Summit Ridge desktop processor edges out the Intel Broadwell-E processor when both chips were set at the same clock speed. AMD chief technology officer Mark Papermaster claims that the company's Zen architecture has the capability of delivering up to 40 percent clock speed improvement compared to AMD's previous generation of processors.
AMD also said that Zen features a Clean-Sheet design. This means that Zen processors sport several changes over AMD's previous chips. These changes include a new cache hierarchy and simultaneous multi-threading. AMD also demonstrated the immense computing power its chip codenamed Naples, a 32-core, 64-thread processor based on the Zen architecture, according to CIO.
AMD said that the first Zen products are aimed towards core-based computing for high-performance desktop computers. AMD added that the Zen architecture will also find its way in enterprise-class servers, mobile computers, and embedded applications, although in a much later date.
