Back in 2021, Intel introduced its 12th Gen x86 CPUs called Alder Lake. The special thing about these parts as opposed to all other x86 CPUs from the past was their hybrid design, similar to how Arm-based chips on phones operate. While the latter is referred to as big.LITTLE, Intel called its design Big-Bigger initially, and then later renamed it to Performance Hybrid architecture.
Following such a drastic departure in architecture design, enthusiasts and analysts often wondered when or if AMD would ever do something similar. Leaks, like patents filed, suggested AMD was also working on such parts, though the existence of a patent does not always guarantee actual release.
However, a new report from a website called PerformanceDatabases claims the existence of such chips. In fact, the report lists purported specifications of these alleged Ryzen 8000 Strix Point APUs, alongside screenshots showing the alleged core configuration details.
The left image below shows the CPU-Z screenshot of the alleged Strix Point APU while the right one is that of HWiNFO64:
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Images source: PerformanceDatabases
As you may notice above, the screenshot on the HWiNFO side suggests the utility is seemingly identifying the smaller "Zen 5c" cores as E-cores, like on Intel; while the Zen 5 cores as the P-cores. The biggest difference between Intel's and AMD's designs is the presence of SMT (simultaneous multi-threading) on the Zen 5c cores too, which Intel's E-cores lack.
Also, it is probably too early to look at the finer details like cache amount or core clocks (there is misreporting on HWiNFO side assuming these screenshots are not outright faked). But the core configuration apparently is four Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c ones, for 12 cores (4+8) and 24 threads in total.
In case you are wondering, Zen 5c is going to succeed AMD's Zen 4c, a cloud-native core AMD introduced with its EPYC "Bergamo" server CPUs. There are two major differences between a Zen 4 core and a Zen 4c core. First is the amount of Level 3 (L3) cache, and second is the operating frequency targets.
While Zen 4 is designed for higher clocks (performance per core / single-core performance), Zen 4c is optimized for lower clocks (around 3GHz) for better performance per watt. Zen 5c is also expected to be not much different.
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The Strix Point APUs are expected to be available around 2024, right around when Windows 12 hits. As far as the integrated graphics on the Strix Point is concerned, AMD is expected to pack RDNA 3.5 GPU cores on it. RDNA 3.5 will be similar to something like Zen+ or Zen 3+ as in there will be some architectural improvements but not a huge performance leap.
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