Interesting times are approaching for AMD. Despite the brutality of the market, its graphics cards have managed to hold ground against Nvidia’s tanks, and today we can get very good performance levels at decent prices. However, the story is different on the processor side. AMD needs to compete again as soon as possible, and all chips are placed on the new Zen generation, which promises up to 40 percent extra performance compared to Excavator cores.
In recent months, all kinds of rumors about AMD have circulated. One of the most recurring and concerning is that Microsoft could buy the company, but with the recent dismissal of the “Nokia operation” and its clear transformation into a software-as-a-service company, the idea of “Redmond savior of AMD” fades considerably. Even so, this rumor was fueled by the departure of Jim Keller, mastermind behind the first Athlons, the famous K8 architecture, and the x86-64 instructions. Luckily, users will have the chance to see Keller’s work again through the Zen architecture, whose launch is planned for next year.
According to Suzanne Plummer, head of the team behind Zen, it is the first time in many years that engineers have “total freedom” to develop a processor from scratch. Plummer anticipates that the increase in chip performance will be considerable, something also reflected in the slides published by AMD in recent months. By comparison, a Zen core will be able to execute up to 40 percent more instructions than an Excavator core at the same frequency. AMD not only needs to prove it can make a competitive high-performance processor, but it must also begin to establish a foundation for what the next generation of consoles will be in the future... assuming it wants to see its hardware in them.
Another problem for AMD is the current state of the PC market. The fact that Windows 10 can be installed on systems half a decade old or more confirms and extends the “ice age” that affects computer sales. For most users, the hardware they have “is enough” and there are not too many positive reasons to stimulate an upgrade. Zen’s plan is to break that line of thinking. Like performance, another thing that cannot fail in Zen is price. The new architecture must demonstrate its ability to scale down and compete across the entire spectrum of processors as well as the high-end.
