AMD's next-gen Zen 4 CPU rumors: around 40% faster than Zen 3

AMD has been making great strides between each of its Zen architectures, with the difference between Zen and Zen 2 being very noticeable -- but it was the jump from Zen 2 to Zen 3 with the recent Ryzen 5000 series CPUs that things really went up into another level.

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But the fun isn't over, with the next-gen Zen 4 architecture in the oven and promising some truly gigantic IPC gains and overall performance uplifts over the current-gen CPUs. The new rumors are coming from ChipsandCheese, with news from AMD's next-gen server family codenamed Genoa. These new EPYC processors will be powered by the Zen 4 architecutre and will offer tremendous benefits all over the place.

The rumors tease that the current Genoa engineering samples with the identical cores and CPU clocks as the Milan EPYC processors, but the new Zen 4-powered CPUs are up to 29% faster.

• When it comes to the Zen 4 architecture, the rumors as they are now: IPC gains of over 25% and overall performance gains of over 40% and up to 5GHz all-core clocks thanks to the next-gen 5nm tech from TSMC.

Here's what ChipsandCheese had to say:

"Zen 4 is what a lot of people are waiting for, and, if the info I have is accurate, that wait will prove to be even more worth it. It is important to note that the one common thread in all Zen 4 chatter I have heard is resounding positivity. From IPC gains over 25%, a total performance gain of 40%, and even possibly (finally) 5GHz all-core thanks to the new (full node) N5 fabrication at TSMC!"

"Now, I can't say what is true and what is an over-exaggeration, however I was told from a trusted source that a Genoa engineering sample (Zen 4 server chip) was 29% faster than a Milan (Zen 3) chip with the same core config at the same clocks. Factor this in with what I have heard about the possible clock gains that N5 will enable over N7 and Zen 4 sounds like it is going to be a monster of a CPU"

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If you thought this was just rumor level stuff, it was in November 2020 that AMD itself teased the Zen 4 architecture with AMD Executive Vice President Rick Bergman saying: "(Given) the maturity of the x86 architecture now, the answer has to be, kind of, all of the above. If you looked at our technical document on Zen 3, it was this long list of things that we did to get that 19% (IPC gain). Zen 4 is going to have a similar long list of things, where you look at everything from the caches, to the branch prediction, (to) the number of gates in the execution pipeline. Everything is scrutinized to squeeze more performance out".

"Certainly (manufacturing) process opens an additional door for us to (obtain) better performance-per-watt and so on, and we'll take advantage of that as well".