AMD officially confirms fresh next-gen Zen 6 CPU details

AMD officially confirms fresh next-gen Zen 6 CPU details

AMD shares new details about its next-generation Zen 6 CPUs

AMD has shared new information on its Zen 6 CPU architecture, confirming several new features for the next-generation processors. This information comes through two sources: a Zen 6 compiler update for GCC 16 (via Phoronix) and a new Zen 6 document from AMD.

With AMD’s new GCC compiler update, the company confirmed several new ISA capabilities for Zen 6. This includes AVX512_BMM, AVX_NE_CONVERT, AVX_IFMA, AVX_VNNI_INT8, and AVX512_FP16. This aligns well with AMD’s comments about “new AI data type support” and “more AI pipelines” when discussing Zen 6 at their 2025 financial analysts day.

In AMD’s Zen 6 performance document, FP16 support has been confirmed, as have changes to the memory profiler and to Zen 6’s integer schedulers. If this document is accurate, AMD is moving away from one unified scheduler with Zen 6 to six separate schedulers with Zen 6. It is currently unknown why AMD is making this architectural change. Regardless, it appears some significant changes are being made to Zen 6’s design. Has AMD moved to move, smaller integer schedulers in an effort to boost Zen 6’s clock speeds or efficiency?

With FP16 support, AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs will be much more capable of calculating certain vector and mathematical calculations at an accelerated rate. This could be part of AMD’s AI push with Zen 6, though it will be useful for other tasks.

Big changes are coming with Zen 6

AMD plans to release Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs in late 2026. Based on prior “Medusa” leaks, these CPUs will feature up to 24 CPU cores with two 12-core CCX/CCD chiplets. This increases the maximum core count per chiplet from 8 to 12. Furthermore, it increases the L3 cache per CCX/CCD from 32 MB to 48 MB.

If these leaks are accurate, AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs should deliver much higher gaming performance than their Zen 5 counterparts. Gaming is highly cache-sensitive, so adding more L3 cache to a Zen 6 CCD will boost gaming performance. With additional Zen 6 architectural enhancements, AMD’s next-gen Ryzen CPUs should be strong performers.

Another leak claims that AMD is targeting 7 GHz clock speeds with its Zen 7 CPUs. If this is true, AMD should deliver significant gains in single-threaded CPU performance. This will accelerate all workloads, though highly single-threaded workloads will see the largest impact. If this leak is true, AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs will benefit from higher core counts, more per-CCD cache, and higher clock speeds. That would be a huge win for AMD.

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