AMD Pinnacle Ridge Processors May Launch In March

After launching the new Zen architecture, AMD aims to keep up with quick refreshes. Last year, AMD finally delivered on Zen with Summit Ridge, bringing a massive boost to their CPU performance. Since then, Summit Ridge has made its way into Ryzen, Threadripper and EPYC. As part of the goal to continually improve performance, AMD is readying a new update set for early 2018. In the latest reports, AMD is reportedly set to launch Pinnacle Ridge in March.

According to the report, Pinnacle Ridge is the code name for Ryzen 2. These will be the new Ryzen 2000 series of processors. Furthermore, Pinnacle Ridge is a process node bump for Zen processors. The design is a die shrink from the current 14nm process down to 12nm. This should provide a minor boost to performance and efficiency. Lastly, it will likely reduce costs though with current processes, it is hard to tell.

AMD Processors and Motherboards Forwards and Backwards Compatible

Along with new processors, we are getting new chipsets as well. The new AM4 400 series of chipsets bring at least the top-tier X470, and the mid-range B450. The new chipsets will supplement and partially replace the current offerings. The main bonus is support for general purpose PCIe 3.0 lanes from the chipset. Furthermore, the chipsets will support Raven Ridge APUs out of the box without the need for a BIOS update per 300 series boards.

Current Ryzen processors should slot into the new AM4 motherboards and vice versa provided the BIOS is updated. Right now, AMD is planning to support AM4 till 2020 at the latest. This means users should get a few more upgrades down the road. The next upgrade break will likely be due to either PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 or DDR5 hitting the mainstream. It is quite nice that AMD is hitting a yearly cadence with Ryzen 2 about a year after Ryzen so hopefully, Ryzen 3 will arrive in early 2019.