Rumors are circulating online about the upcoming new high-end Ryzen CPU socket being prepared by AMD. According to reports, the new socket and chipset will be compatible with 16 core and 32 thread CPUs and will support quad-channel DDR4 memory, which should compete against rivals such as Intel's X99 platform.
The said Ryzen chip will be the new iteration of CPUs following the Ryzen 7 series, although rumors suggest that it can be marketed as the most premium model of the line. The 16-core/32-thread Ryzen chip already went online with previous reports revealing the processor's overclocked speed of 2.4GHz and 2.8GHz.
However, latest news on the said Ryzen chip updated the base and boost clock speeds to 3.1GHz and 3.6GHz, and is now dubbed as X399.
The Ryzen chip with 16 cores will be reportedly introduced with a new socket that is compatible with AMD's X399 chipset with support for quad-channel memory. Other sources also indicate that AMD will shift for a land grid array (LGA) for the new processor rather than the company's traditional pin grid array (PGA) design.
Through all these improvements, the Ryzen chip is expected to challenge Intel's X99 platform with the 16-core chip. Technically, the 16-core Ryzen chip is a stripped down version of the rumored Naples server platform and will be built using a multi-chip module (MCM), Telegiz reported.
Using the multi-chip module approach, AMD is "basically gluing two dies on one PCB instead of using a much more complex huge die," Ocaholic.ch reported. In the AMD Naples server, the chip will hit the market with dual 8-channel memory controllers that can accommodate up to 4TB of DDR4 RAM with interface speed of 2400MHz.
The Naples server is significantly better than Intel's server, which can only manage quad-channel memory setup with its currently known DDR4 speed at 1866MHz. Furthermore, AMD has revealed in the past that the "dual-socket Naples server was up to 2.5X faster than a competing dual-socket Intel Xeon server."
As of now, AMD could set the date for the Naples server platform in no later than June 2017, while no further details on the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen CPU's launch are revealed.