AMD Ryzen CPUs will be released this coming March, likely coinciding with the GDC 2017 that will run from February 27 to March 3, and this was confirmed this week by AMD CEO Lisa Su. The chipmaker also revealed its plan to bring the Vega GPUs to the market soon after the launch of Zen Summit Ridge processing chips.
PC World reported that during the earnings call by AMD, Su also presented the company's near-term and long-term roadmap. The plan calls for the introduction of CPUs and GPUs that will meet head-on with current leaders Intel and NVIDIA.
In challenging Intel's grip on the processing chip market, AMD will unleash its Zen-based processors that will carry the Ryzen CPU brand. As if confirming the swirling rumors that Ryzen will be out on or before March 3, Su announced that the chips will be out early March and stressed at the same time that "there will be widespread system availability from day one."
The same report said that AMD has made clear its strategy of competing against the PC hardware leaders so apart from the Ryzen thrust the company will also take on NVIDIA with the AMD Vega graphics cards. Rumors have it that cards on the Vega 10 and 11 platforms will tussle with NVIDIA GPUs starting in the second half of 2017 or earlier.
And if the roadmap shared by AMD is to go by, the rumored timing appears to sync with Su's blueprint. But the AMD chief has yet to indicate the exact debut time for the Vega 10 and 11 GPUs.
However, AMD listed on its roadmap that will roll out in the coming months. The Naples server, also Zen-based, will become available anytime in April or May while the Zen Raven Ridge APU, said to be geared mostly for portable computing, will come out starting in July 2017.
The Zen architecture will continue to be the flagship platform for upcoming AMD processors and according to Su, the development of Zen 2 and Zen 3 CPUs are now underway and both will make use of the 7-nanometer process.
So by next month, AMD's Zen SR3, SR5 and SR7 will be sitting on store shelves and recent reports have indicated that the chips will be in 4-core and 8-core configurations with the most high-end option boasting of 8-core/16-thread.
In battling Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 chips, the Ryzen Summit Ridge chips are expected to be disruptive by undercutting its rival's pricing models. "Given AMD's weak position in the CPU industry, I would expect aggressive pricing from the company," The Motley Fool said in a report.