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Zen+ is the
codename A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a Code word (figure of speech), code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may ...
for 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 to the first gen
Zen microarchitecture Zen is the codename for a family of computer processor microarchitectures from Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, first launched in February 2017 with the first generation of its Ryzen CPUs. It is used in Ryzen (desktop and mobile), Ryzen Threadripper ...
, first released in April 2018, powering the second generation of Ryzen processors, known as Ryzen 2000 for mainstream desktop systems, Threadripper 2000 for high-end desktop setups and Ryzen 3000G (instead of 2000G) for accelerated processing units (APUs).


Features

Zen+ uses
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 ...
' 12 nm fabrication process, an optimization of the 14 nm process used for Zen, with only minor design rule changes. This means that the die sizes between Zen and Zen+ are identical as AMD chose to use the new smaller transistors to increase the amount of empty space, or "
dark silicon In the electronics industry, dark silicon is the amount of circuitry of an integrated circuit that cannot be powered-on at the nominal operating voltage for a given thermal design power (TDP) constraint. Dennard scaling would posit that as trans ...
", between the various features on the die. This was done to improve power efficiency & reduce thermal density to allow for higher
clock speed In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...
s, rather than design an entirely new
floorplan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to Scale (ratio), scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a struct ...
for a physically smaller die (which would have been significantly more work and thus more expensive). These process optimizations allowed 12 nm Zen+ to clock about +250 MHz (≈6%) higher, or to lower power consumption when at the same frequency by 10%, when compared to their prior 14 nm Zen products. Although conversely at the microarchitecture level, Zen+ had only minor revisions versus Zen. Known changes to the microarchitecture include improved clock speed regulation in response to workload ("Precision Boost 2"), reduced cache and memory latencies (some significantly so), increased cache bandwidth, and finally improved IMC performance allowing for better
DDR4 Double Data Rate 4 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR4 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory with a high bandwidth (" double data rate") interface. Released to the market in 2014, it is a variant of dynamic ra ...
memory support (officially
JEDEC The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association is an independent semiconductor engineering trade organization and standardization body headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia, United States. JEDEC has over 300 members, including some of the w ...
rated to support up to 2933 MHz compared to just 2666 MHz on the prior Zen core). Zen+ also supports improvements in the per-core clocking features, based on core utilization and CPU temperatures. These changes to the core utilization, temperature, and power algorithms are branded as "Precision Boost 2" and "XFR2" ("eXtended Frequency Range 2"), evolutions of the first-generation technologies in Zen. On Zen, XFR gave an additional 50 to 200 MHz clock speed increase (in 25 MHz increments) over the maximum Precision Boost clocks. For Zen+, XFR2 is no longer listed as a separate clock modifier. Instead, the XFR temperature, power, and clock monitoring and logic feeds into the Precision Boost 2 algorithm to adjust clocks and power consumption opportunistically and dynamically. Ultimately, the changes in Zen+ resulted in a 3% improvement in IPC over Zen; which in conjunction with 6% higher clock speeds resulted in up to 10% overall increase in performance.


Feature tables


CPUs

CPU features table


APUs

APU features table


Products


Desktop CPUs


Desktop APUs


Mobile APUs


Embedded APUs

In 2022, AMD announced the R2000 series of embedded APUs.


See also

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AMD K9 The AMD K9 represents a microarchitecture by AMD designed to replace the K8 processors, featuring dual-core processing. Development K9 appears originally to have been an ambitious 8 issue per clock cycle core redesign of the K7 or the K8 pr ...
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AMD K10 The AMD Family 10h, or K10, is a microprocessor microarchitecture by AMD based on the K8 microarchitecture. Though there were once reports that the K10 had been canceled,
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Jim Keller (engineer) James B. Keller (born 1958/1959) is a microprocessor engineer best known for his work at AMD and Apple. He was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture (including the original Athlon 64) and was involved in designing the Athlon (K7) a ...
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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 ...
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Steamroller (microarchitecture) AMD Steamroller Family 15h is a microarchitecture developed by AMD for AMD APUs, which succeeded Piledriver in the beginning of 2014 as the third-generation Bulldozer-based microarchitecture. Steamroller APUs continue to use two-core modules as ...
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Zen (microarchitecture) Zen is the codename for a family of computer processor microarchitectures from AMD, first launched in February 2017 with the first generation of its Ryzen CPUs. It is used in Ryzen (desktop and mobile), Ryzen Threadripper (workstation/high end ...
*
Zen 2 Zen 2 is a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor of AMD's Zen and Zen+ microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the 7 nanometer MOSFET node from TSMC. The microarchitecture powers the third generation of Ryzen proce ...


References

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