AMD is paving the 7nm road and the ZEN2 architecture hard and fast. In SiSoft Sandra now an entry can be spotted, this is an early engineering sample AMD Rome Epyc 2 processor running 64 cores and 128-threads (single CPU) at 2.2 GHz.

The chip tested is the AMD ZS1406E2VJUG5_22 / 14_N iwhich was planed into a Dell PowerEdge R7515 server. The proc is a qualification sample and perform close to the final performance aside from maybe the Turbo frequencies. Right now it is setup as 1.4 GHz Base with a boost to 2.2 GHz on all 64 cores. You can spot 64 x 512 KB L2 cache and 256 MB L3 cache. The second generation of Epyc chips is codenamed Rome and has a maximum of 64 cores and 128 threads by combining eight 8-core 7nm chips . ZEN2 will bring a higher ipc, smaller fabrication process and lower consumption.

These processors are of course data-center products, but you know it, this architecture will end up in desktop processors. So far all it pretty interesting. AMD expects a 25% generational performance increase for the CPU cores. While that's not IPC, the theory is that one die package would be 25% faster.

ZEN2 is not just a die-shink, it's a new architecture and based on chipsets. 7nm dies surrounding one 14nm IO chip in the center connected through AMD's Infinity fabric. The "Zen 2" high-performance x86 CPU processor core thus has a modular design methodology. An improved AMD Infinity Fabric interconnect links the separated pieces of silicon ("chiplets") within a single processor package. This should solve some latency issues. The new processor also will support 8-channel DDR4 memory. Also, PCI-Express will be supported. Rome looks amazing, the dies are just so small.





