Update:

We’ve mentioned in the article below that we weren’t able to identify if Summit Ridge is going to have pins placed on the CPU itself. However folks at JagatReview were able to get a high resolution photo of Summit Ridge CPU from the back side and it revealed that AMD is indeed going to use a Pin Grid Array type socket. This means that the pins are placed on the CPU itself just like past AMD CPUs, again for their future AM4 platform and Zen architecture.

Original Story:

A week ago we discussed Zen, things we know, it’s future and what it means for AMD. Yesterday, at Computex 2016 together with their new Polaris GPU architecture and 7th generation Bristol Ridge APUs, AMD has revealed some new info about Zen. Zen Summit Ridge

Zen code named “Summit Ridge” in the flesh

At the end of the Computex presentation AMD prepared a surprise, which was to show-off an actual physical Zen CPU engineering sample. The part of the presentation was handled by Dr. Lisa Su herself and she held up, shown above, the CPU which is code named “Summit Ridge.” A promo video of the CPU was shown and Dr. Su said that the presentation itself had been edited, rendered and played backed on an actual Zen equipped PC. Summit Ridge looks physically very similar to current AMD CPUs but we’re unable to identify if they’re keeping the connection pins on the CPU itself.

Computex Zen

Zen on track with 40% more IPC, sampling in few weeks

Dr. Su confirmed that Zen had taped out early this year and it will be sampling to AMD’s high profile customers in few weeks while a wider range of OEMs will get it in Q3 2016. She also confirmed that the new architecture is on track for a healthy performance boost with 40% more IPC. Apparently they already have engineering samples in their labs together with server variants which, according to Dr. Su, are running very well. Zen is supposedly very flexible architecture with excellent efficiency, ranging from low power devices to high performance market segment including servers and even being low-power enough to be part of AMD’s embedded offerings.

If everything goes well, then the new CPU architecture is going to be launched in Q4 2016 with full availability in Q1 2017. It will utilize the new AM4 platform and will feature up to eight cores and 16 threads. Polaris enabled APUs and other embedded products should follow sometime after it’s fully launched later this year.