AMD's 7nm Rome processors are ushering in a new wave of multi-chip architectures for data center processors, but AMD has remained coy about exactly when the 64-core 128-thread processors will come to market, instead saying vaguely that they will arrive in 2019. According to a motherboard vendor that displayed a new motherboard designed to support the Rome processors and PCIe 4.0, the first wave of fully-compatible Rome motherboards will arrive in Q3 2019, likely signalling the beginning of shipments for the Rome chips.

AMD confirmed to us at its Next Horizon event last week that while Rome processors will drop into existing motherboards, they won't support the PCIe gen 4.0 speeds. Instead, a new wave of SP3 motherboards will come with improved PCIe designs that support the faster standard.

And that's the main attraction of this single socket motherboard. The processor exposes 128 PCIe lanes that are allocated to the four x16 slots and two one x8 slot. The board also provides two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and two M.2 SSD sockets to the lower right. That type of connectivity signifies the main value attraction of AMD's current-gen Naples processors, but adding more cores to the equation, and the lower power- and cost-per-core that come along with the 7nm process, will create an even more competitive platform next year. AMD's continues pressure should threaten Intel's market share, largely because it remains on the 14nm process.