AMD Zen 6 CPUs (on 2nm) have reportedly been glimpsed - but don't get excited

We've had an initial sighting of AMD's Zen 6 processors, although this is a leak we should be very careful around, as you'll see.

The spillage comes from a purported AMD engineer's LinkedIn profile, as flagged up by Wccftech, but we should note that the details were swiftly removed from the site (which isn't particularly surprising).

Furthermore, a tweet from Maraux David, pointing out the profile, has also since been deleted (although another source Wccftech followed to find this info, Kepler_L2, has not removed their tweet).

Those all make for good reasons to be skeptical about this, but it certainly isn't beyond the bounds of belief that the leak is genuine. At any rate, it doesn't tell us all that much about Zen 6 anyway, as you might expect at this stage (although one thing it seems to confirm is that the name will stick with 'Zen', as past rumors have floated the idea that AMD might switch naming convention with this architecture).

What the engineer does say is that they are working on power management issues for Zen 6 server chips, and the big info - aside from some technical gobbledegook - is that these processors will be built on 2nm.

We can guess, then, that given Zen 5 is looking at a launch in the first half of next year, most likely Q1 2024 if the rumor mill is to be believed, Zen 6 could just turn up early in 2026, perhaps? Or we could even be looking at late 2025, as TSMC has said it expects to be hitting mass production of 2nm at that point.

The other nugget of info imparted here is that the codename for Zen 6 cores will be Morpheus, perhaps hinting that these CPUs will run like a dream (or perhaps not).

Not on AMD roadmaps yet

It's worth noting that Zen 6 has yet to officially be mentioned by AMD, or placed on any processor roadmaps, but it is still some way down the line.

This leak - even though it requires tons of seasoning, as noted - is at least a hint that we might be hearing a bit more about Zen 6 before too long.

Certainly, the grapevine has been alive with plentiful chatter around Zen 5 already this month, with a bunch of performance-related rumors doing the rounds.

That includes the assertion that these processors could be real trouble for Intel based on a fresh benchmark leak that shows an eye-opening result, especially given that Zen 5 is still at an early stage. The overall consensus is at least a 20% performance uplift (IPC) from Ryzen 7000, and quite possibly a bit more than this.

Another notable Zen 5 leak is from the father of the Zen architecture, Jim Keller, who also believes that these next-gen CPUs will be something special. Note that a good deal of this early buzz about Zen 5 is based on server processors, but that should still reflect very similar levels of boosted performance in desktop chips.