Amd zen 2, highlight chiplet design as the key to its success

At ISSCC 2020, AMD has highlighted many of the design innovations offered by its Zen 2 CPU architecture, the core design underpinning the company's innovative Ryzen and EPYC processors.

AMD took a chiplet approach with Zen 2

The highlight of AMD's Zen 2 designs is not the cores themselves, but how they are connected. On desktop and server platforms, AMD took a chiplet approach with Zen 2, dividing its processor designs into multiple silicon matrices. Thanks to this, AMD has confirmed that it can make incredible cost savings, something that has given AMD a significant price / performance advantage over Intel.

Looking at the AMD slides, the company highlights that a 64-core processor would be impossible with a single 7nm monolithic design. Furthermore, with its 16, 24, 32 and 48-core models, AMD has claimed that their silicon costs would be approximately 2 times higher if they took the monolithic approach. Combining these two factors, it is clear that AMD's chiplet approach has enabled the company to create larger processors at significantly reduced die cost.

By moving to AMD's Ryzen line of desktop computers, the company has also confirmed that its chiplet approach has led to significant cost savings for its 16- and 8-core CPU models. For its 16-core processor, the Ryzen 9 3950X, AMD claims a cost advantage of more than 2 times when compared to an equivalent monolithic processor. By moving to AMD's 8-core processors, which use two silicon matrices instead of three, AMD sees lower cost advantages that are nonetheless significant to the company's bottom line.

The chiplet approach is what has enabled AMD to launch its 3rd generation Ryzen processors at such an affordable price, while maintaining high margins at retailers.

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In the future, large-scale processors will all move to chiplet-based designs. The disadvantages of multi-matrix architectures are nothing when compared to the cost benefits they also provide. Intel will also focus on chiplet processors in the future. We will keep you informed.

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