Zen 2 is a

computer processor In computing and computer science, a processor or processing unit is an electrical component (digital circuit) that performs operations on an external data source, usually memory or some other data stream. It typically takes the form of a micropr ...

microarchitecture by

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

. It is the successor of

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

and

Zen+ Zen+ is the codename for a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor to the first gen Zen microarchitecture, first released in April 2018, powering the second generation of Ryzen processors, known as Ryzen 2000 for mainstre ...

microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the

7 nanometer In semiconductor manufacturing, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors defines the 7 nm process as the MOSFET technology node following the 10 nm node. It is based on FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) technology, ...

MOSFET The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...

node from

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...

. The microarchitecture powers the third generation of

Ryzen Ryzen ( ) is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainst ...

processors, known as Ryzen 3000 for the mainstream desktop chips (codename "Matisse"), Ryzen 4000U/H (codename "Renoir") and Ryzen 5000U (codename "Lucienne") for mobile applications, as Threadripper 3000 for high-end desktop systems, and as Ryzen 4000G for accelerated processing units (APUs). The Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were released on 7 July 2019, while the Zen 2-based

Epyc Epyc is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and sold by AMD, based on the company's Zen microarchitecture. Introduced in June 2017, they are specifically targeted for the server and embedded system markets. Epyc processors share ...

server CPUs (codename "Rome") were released on 7 August 2019. An additional chip, the Ryzen 9 3950X, was released in November 2019. At CES 2019, AMD showed a Ryzen third-generation

engineering sample Engineering samples are the beta versions of integrated circuits that are meant to be used for compatibility qualification or as demonstrators. They are usually loaned to OEM manufacturers prior to the chip's commercial release to allow product d ...

that contained one chiplet with eight cores and 16 threads. AMD CEO

Lisa Su Lisa Su (; born 7 November 1969) is a Taiwanese-American business executive and electrical engineer, who is the president, chief executive officer and chair of AMD. Early in her career, Su worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semi ...

also said to expect more than eight cores in the final lineup. At

Computex COMPUTEX Taipei, or Taipei International Information Technology Show (), is a computer expo held annually in Taipei, Taiwan. Since the early 2000s, it is one of the largest computer and technology trade shows in the world. The last COMPUTEX was ...

2019, AMD revealed that the Zen 2 "Matisse" processors would feature up to 12 cores, and a few weeks later a 16 core processor was also revealed at E3 2019, being the aforementioned Ryzen 9 3950X. Zen 2 includes hardware mitigations to the Spectre security vulnerability. Zen 2-based EPYC server CPUs use a design in which multiple CPU dies (up to eight in total) manufactured on a 7 nm process ("

chiplets A chiplet is a tiny integrated circuit (IC) that contains a well-defined subset of functionality. It is designed to be combined with other chiplets on an interposer in a single electronic packaging, package. A set of chiplets can be implemented in ...

") are combined with a 14 nm I/O die on each multi-chip module (MCM) package. Using this, up to 64 physical cores and 128 total compute threads (with

simultaneous multithreading Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is a technique for improving the overall efficiency of superscalar CPUs with hardware multithreading. SMT permits multiple independent threads of execution to better use the resources provided by modern process ...

) are supported per socket. This architecture is nearly identical to the layout of the "pro-consumer" flagship processor Threadripper 3990X. Zen 2 delivers about 15% more

instructions per clock In computer architecture, instructions per cycle (IPC), commonly called instructions per clock is one aspect of a processor's performance: the average number of instructions executed for each clock cycle. It is the multiplicative inverse of cycl ...

than Zen and Zen+, the 14- and 12-nm microarchitectures utilized on first and second generation Ryzen respectively. The

Steam Deck The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer developed by Valve Corporation. Released on February 25, 2022, the Steam Deck can be played as a handheld or connected to a monitor in the same manner as the Nintendo Switch. It is an x86-64-v3 de ...

PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North Ame ...

Xbox Series X and Series S The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 2020, t ...

all use chips based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture, with proprietary tweaks and different configurations in each system's implementation than AMD sells in its own commercially available APUs.

Design

Zen 2 is a significant departure from the physical design paradigm of AMD's previous Zen architectures,

and

. Zen 2 moves to a

multi-chip module A multi-chip module (MCM) is generically an electronic assembly (such as a package with a number of conductor terminals or "pins") where multiple integrated circuits (ICs or "chips"), semiconductor dies and/or other discrete components are int ...

design where the I/O components of the CPU are laid out on its own, separate

die Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life. Die may also refer to: Games * Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers Manufacturing * Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...

, which is also called a chiplet in this context. This separation has benefits in scalability and manufacturability. As physical interfaces don't scale very well with shrinks in

process technology A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

, their separation into a different die allows these components to be manufactured using a larger, more mature process node than the CPU dies. The CPU dies (referred to by AMD as or CCDs), now more compact due to the move of I/O components onto another die, can be manufactured using a smaller process with fewer manufacturing defects than a larger die would exhibit (since the chances of a die having a defect increases with device (die) size) while also allowing for more dies per wafer. In addition, the central I/O die can service multiple chiplets, making it easier to construct processors with a large number of cores. Zen2 Microarchitektur

With Zen 2, each CPU chiplet houses 8 CPU cores, arranged in 2 (CCXs), each of 4 CPU cores. These chiplets are manufactured using

node and are about 74 to 80 mm² in size. The chiplet has about 3.8 billion transistors, while the 12 nm I/O die (IOD) is ~125 mm² and has 2.09 billion transistors. The amount of

L3 cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, whic ...

has been doubled to 32 MB, with each CCX in the chiplet now having access to 16 MB of L3 compared to the 8 MB of Zen and Zen+.

AVX2 Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) are extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture for microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). They were proposed by Intel in March 2008 and first supported by Intel with the Sandy Bridge ...

performance is greatly improved by an increase in execution unit width from 128-bit to 256-bit. There are multiple variants of the I/O die: one manufactured on

GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, th ...

14 nanometer The 14 nm process refers to the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the 22nm (or 20nm) node. The 14nm was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about 2011, the node following 22nm was expe ...

process, and another manufactured using the same company's 12 nanometer process. The 14 nanometer dies have more features and are used for the EPYC Rome processors, whereas the 12 nm versions are used for consumer processors. Both processes have similar feature sizes, so their transistor density is also similar. AMD's Zen 2 architecture can deliver higher performance at a lower power consumption than Intel's Cascade Lake architecture, with an example being the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X running with a TDP of 140W in ECO mode delivering higher performance than the Intel Core i9-10980XE running with a TDP of 165W.

New features

* Some new

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...

extensions: WBNOINVD, CLWB, RDPID, RDPRU, MCOMMIT. Each instruction uses its own

CPUID In the x86 architecture, the CPUID instruction (identified by a CPUID opcode) is a processor supplementary instruction (its name derived from CPU IDentification) allowing software to discover details of the processor. It was introduced by Intel ...

bit. * Hardware mitigations against the Spectre V4 speculative store bypass vulnerability. * Zero-latency memory mirroring optimization (undocumented).

Feature tables

CPUs

CPU features table

APUs

APU features table

Products

On 26 May 2019, AMD announced six Zen 2-based desktop Ryzen processors (codenamed "Matisse"). These included 6-core and 8-core variants in the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 product lines, as well as a new Ryzen 9 line that includes the company's first 12-core and 16-core mainstream desktop processors. The Matisse I/O die is also used as the X570 chipset. AMD's second generation of

processors, codenamed "Rome", feature up to 64 cores, and were launched on 7 August 2019.

Desktop CPUs

3000 series (Matisse)

4000 series (Renoir)

Based on the Ryzen 4000G series

APUs Apus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek language, Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. ...

but with the

integrated graphics A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

disabled.

Desktop APUs

Mobile APUs

Renoir (4000 series)

Lucienne (5000 series)

Ultra-mobile APUs

In 2022, AMD announced the Mendocino ulra-mobile APUs.

Embedded APUs

Server CPUs

Video game consoles and other embedded

*AMD 4700S

Gallery

File:AMD Ryzen 7 3700X top IMGP3165 smial wp.jpg, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X File:AMD@7nm(12nmIOD)@Zen2@Matisse@Ryzen 5 3600@100-000000031 BF 1923SUT 9HM6935R90062 DSC04789-DSC04810 - ZS-DMap (48319202011).jpg, Zen 2 I/O Die File:AMD@7nm(12nmIO)@Zen2@Matisse@Ryzen 5 3600@100-000000031 BF 1923SUT 9HM6935R90062 DSCx4@IOD Infrared.jpg, Infrared die shot of the I/O Die File:AMD EPYC Rome 12nm IO die shot 3.jpg, EPYC I/O Die File:Zen2 Matisse Ryzen 7nm Core Die shot.jpg, Zen 2 Core Complex Die (CCD) File:AMD@7nm(12nmIOD)@Zen2@Rome@EPYC 7702 ES@2S1404E2VJUG5 BB ES DSCx1.jpg, AMD EPYC 7702 server processor. File:AMD@7nm(12nmIOD)@Zen2@Rome@EPYC 7702 ES@2S1404E2VJUG5 BB ES DSCx3.jpg, A delidded AMD 7702 featuring 8 CCDs and 1 I/O die, with remains of the solder thermal interface material (TIM) on the chiplets.

References

{{AMD processor roadmap AMD microarchitectures AMD x86 microprocessors X86 microarchitectures