After names like Renoir, Dali, Cezanne whose Van Gogh the APU enters Dragon Crest a Phoenix. So if the late actor River Phoenix is not related to the name of the last, it means that AMD is ending with the artists. APU Phoenix it is thus probably related to the mythical fire bird. Whether the company points to processor temperatures and the amount of waste heat can only be speculated, however, if there was a connection, there is some hope for the well-known property of the phoenix: After it burns, it is reborn from the ashes. Which would be useful for hardware.
Now more seriously: Below is an AMD roadmap made up of excerpts published by one of the leakers in the past. The sty with a question mark should belong to a small APU Dragon Crest, with a larger APU Phoenix will succeed the APU Rembrandt. We can therefore expect it classically at the beginning of 2023.
Phoenix looks like the first classic APU with cores Zen 4, however, there is still the possibility that Zen 4 with integrated graphics will appear on the desktop in the form of standard processors. The originally leaked snippet (unfortunately not the redrawn version shown above) of the AMD roadmap clearly stated an optional addition to the desktop processor Vermeer / Zen 4 integrated Navi / RDNA architecture graphics (2?).
| HELP | year | proc. | CPU | GPU | area |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llano | 2011 | 32nm | 4/4 × K10.5 | 400 SP VLIW-5 | 226 mm² |
| Trinity Richland |
2012 2013 |
32nm | 4/4× Piledriver | 384 SP VLIW-4 | 246 mm² |
| Guy | 2014 | 28nm | 4/4× Steamroller | 512 SP GCN2 | 245 mm² |
| Carrizo Bristol Ridge |
2015 2016 |
28nm | 4/4× Excavator | 512 SP GCN3 | 245 mm² |
| Raven Ridge Picasso |
2017 2019 |
14nm 12nm |
4/8× Zen(+) | 704 SP Vega | 210 mm² |
| Renoir Lucienne |
2020 2021 |
7nm | 8/16× Zen 2 | 512 SP Vega + | 156 mm² |
| Cezanne Barcelo |
2021 2022 |
7nm | 8/16× Zen 3 | 512 SP Vega + | 180 mm² |
| Rembrandt | 2022 | 6nm | 8/16× Zen 3+ | RDNA2 | 208 mm² |
| Phoenix | 2023 | ? | Zen 4 | ? | ? |
Phoenix will almost certainly be 6nm or 5nm. Samsung’s 5nm process, which is similar to the TSMC 6nm process, could also make sense. The integrated graphics could be RDNA2, less likely RDNA 3. We also learn that the mobile version will be equipped with an FP8 interface, ie a generation newer than the APU Rembrandt (FP7). Both are expected to deploy DDR5, so if a new interface is needed, this could indicate the deployment of a new version of PCIe, PCIe 5.0.
The number of nuclei remains largely unknown. We know that Epyc server processors built on Zen 4, offer 96 cores. So more than Zen 3. However, it is not known whether this will be implemented through a higher number of chipsets (instead of eight eight-core ones, twelve eight-core ones will come), or whether AMD will increase the chipsets / core complex themselves from eight cores to twelve. In the second case, the APU could theoretically be up to twelve cores. However, this is rather assuming that 5nm production would be produced at TSMC, otherwise it would probably not be so important from an energy point of view. However, it remains more likely that a product intended primarily for mobile deployment will remain eight-core.