Only a few days have passed since AMD released its Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which include up to 16 Zen 4 cores, yet there are already rumours about the company’s upcoming major CPU announcement.
According to prolific CPU sleuth Benchleaks(opens in new tab) (via Tom’sHardware(opens in new tab)), the successor to the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX, the fastest x86 processor in the world, has been seen in einstein@home(opens in new tab), a well-known scientific computing initiative.
According to the listing, the processor is a “AuthenticAMD AMD Eng Sample: 100-000000454-20 Y [Family 25 Model 24 Stepping 1],” however it has 128 threads (64 cores with two threads each) and a strange identifier that makes it different from any other AMD processors that are currently on the market.
This upcoming Storm Peak product, which will likely be called 7995WX and have four dies attached together (probably an underclocked 65W AMD Ryzen 9 7950X), will follow in the footsteps of its predecessor. With some overheads (I/O, etc.), it will have a TDP of about 260W, which will nicely match the 280W TDP of the 5995WX powered by Zen 3. The latter had a 292MB combined cache (L1 + L2 + L3) and a base speed of 2.7GHz with a maximum boost clock of 4.5GHz.numerous workstations
The new processors will be used in desktop workstation PCs, where large processor/thread counts greatly aid a range of applications, such as video editing, rendering, financial analysis, GIS, AI, and ML, beyond only higher frequencies.
The newest Threadripper-based products are likely to be released by Lenovo, Dell, and niche vendors (Maingear, Velocity Micro, and Puget Systems) in June 2023.
As it tries to increase the amount of cores, Intel will be closely watching as well, reflecting what we have seen in the consumer market. The 13th generation Core i7 CPUs, which were recently released a few days ago, now have 16 cores, making them comparable to AMD’s Ryzen 7 line.
Will Intel step it up and increase the number of Xeon cores (which now top out at 40 cores)? We wouldn’t bet against that, but in order to keep prices competitive, there may need to be a significant price cut for the 40-core 8380, which costs roughly 50% more than the 64-core 5995WX.
It will be intriguing to watch if AMD introduces a new line of Threadripper chips designed for mobile workstations, a tiny but valuable market segment Intel presently dominates.
