AMD released its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors last year at the end of August. Alongside those, the company debuted DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support with the new LGA1718 Socket AM5 platform. More recently, it unveiled the X3D CPUs to expand Ryzen 7000 lineup. These processors are extremely impressive both in terms of efficiency and raw compute throughput.
During a recent Meet the Experts Webinar cast, AMD shared an updated roadmap for AM5, adding some details about its next-gen Ryzen chips. According to the roadmap, AMD is going to release Ryzen 8000 series processors next year in 2024. It also reveals that AMD is planning to keep Socket AM5 around till 2026 which will be four years since its introduction. The firm notes that this is preliminary information and hence the actual longevity could end up being bigger just like AM4.
The chip will be based on the Zen 5 architecture, and it will not be any refresh or iteration of Zen 4. The integrated graphics on-board will be Navi 3.5 which will supposedly feature some of the improvements that next-gen RDNA will sport:
RDNA 3.5/gfx11.5 is, as the name implies, an in-between gen with features from both RDNA3 and 4.
— Kepler (@Kepler_L2) June 5, 2023
It contains the new RDNA4 SALU with support for FP32 instructions and improvements to the geometry engine, but not other RDNA4 features like the new scheduler and improved RT cores.
As these processors are set to arrive next year, there is a chance that these chips will be Next Valley-ready. For those who are wondering, the Next Valley or the Hudson Valley is apparently the official internal name for Windows 12 and it is expected to land next year.
If things pan out similar to how they happened with Windows 11, rumors suggest Microsoft might make the Pluton co-processor a mandatory system requirement in the next-gen OS. But that shouldn"t be an issue for Ryzen 8000 since AMD has been sporting Pluton since the 6000 series.
However, Intel may not yet be fully onboard with the idea of Pluton. Speaking of Intel, the rumor tying Meteor Lake-S and Windows 12 was debunked by us and it is looking more and more like Arrow Lake will be the one dueling against Zen 5 inside the Windows 12 colosseum.
While we are on the topic of system requirements and supported chips, it is good to see Linux still offering continued support and performance boosts on parts like Ryzen 1000 (original Zen).