”Zen is alive, Zen is on track and we are extraordinarily excited about what Zen will bring to the market place,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said during a press conference at Taiwan’s annual Computex trade show.
Zen was “taped out” earlier this year, Su said, and the (simplistic) video for the chip's presentation was even produced with a Zen CPU. AMD's expected to begin sampling the processors to limited partners within a few weeks, with a wider round expected for the third quarter of this year.
Why this matters: After a disastrous few years of getting its nose punched in by Core processors, AMD created Zen from scratch to go toe-to-toe with Intel's CPUs. This chip signals AMD’s return to duking it out for high-performance supremacy.
Zen's built around a new AM4 socket that introduces DDR4 memory compatibility to AMD's lineup and will apparently be compatible with existing coolers from legacy AM3+ motherboards.
AMD has long said Zen would feature at least a 40 percent increase in instructions per clock over its current generation Vishera chips. AMD will abandon the architecture of its Vishera chips in favor of a simultaneous multi-threading approach similar to Intel’s Hyper-Threading.
Pricing wasn’t disclosed—nor even hinted at—but many are looking forward to AMD’s Zen putting pressure on Intel. The very day before Su held up a Zen CPU, Intel announced a new 10-core chip many expected to cost $1,000. Instead, Intel will charge over $1,700 for the Core i7-6950X.