AMD Working on Monstrous Opteron Processor with 32 Zen x86 High Performance Cores

Previously leaked information revealed the existence of a 16 Core Zen APU with HBM Graphics, and it now appears (via Fudzilla) that there is a monstrous 32 core processor in the works too – minus the Greenland integrated graphics. The Opteron processor is set for 2016 and will target the server market solely. AMD seems to be following the 50-50 golden ratio of an APU in in Opteron as well, because foregoing Greenland graphics appears to double the amount of cores.

AMD aiming massive Opteron processor with 32 Zen cores at the server market in 2016

The excess silicon space that results from the removal of Greenland graphics is given toL2, L3 cache as well as its Zen x86 cores. Each core will have 512KB of L2 cache and 4 cores will share 8MB worth of L3 cache. The processor will be divided into eight clusters of 4 cores each for a net total of 32 cores. A platform security model of the same will enable security features which include secure boot and cryptographic co processing. The next generation Opteron processor has eight DDR4 memory channels capable of handling 256GB per channel. The chipset supports PCIe Gen 3 SATA, 4x10GbE Gig Ethernet and Sever controller HUB.

AMD is also preparing a 16 core Zen APU targeted at the same market segment, something we have already detailed before. The new platform, as of yet, does not have a name. But it will purportedly succeed the Godaveri platform sometime in 2016. The die will have four channel DDR4 support and PCIe 3.0 support. The APU will most probably be divided into 4 clusters since each Zen core will have to share L3 with 4 other cores (while retaining its own dedicated L2).

The CPU cores (of the APU variant) will communicate with Greenland graphics over an custom interconnect called “Coherent Fabric”. The configuration is very ideal for HSA too and we could see this becoming a titan in HPC computing based on value.As far as the high bandwidth memory is concerned, we can speculate that it could be HBM2 considering the time frame of the APU.

As for this 32 Core APU, from the specifications it appears to be a dual CPU die connected through an interconnect (8 memory channels as opposed to 4). Interestingly, while we now have two separate SKUs for the server market, we have yet to hear any news of the same on the consumer sector. Whether or not Zen makes it to the consumer sector in the near future is something that remains to be seen.