AMD reveals new roadmap for its Ryzen CPUs, teasing Zen 7 as the true "next-generation" leap with 2nm — Lineup confirms 2026 release for Zen 6, coming with expanded AI features

AMD has just revealed an updated Zen roadmap for its CPUs at Financial Analyst Day, labeled "Leadership CPU Core Roadmap." While it doesn't delve into details — or even show any new ones — we do get explicit confirmations for a bunch of previously-rumored (albeit obvious) tech. AMD also made Zen 7 official for the first time in a roadmap, teasing a release date beyond 2026. Let's break it all down.

Starting with what's due next: Zen 6. We already knew it was coming next year, which the slide below reinforces, and AMD confirms that Zen 6 will be "industry-first" in leveraging TSCM's flagship 2nm (N2) process nodes. AMD CTO Mark Papermaster highlighted that both Zen 6 and Zen 6C will benefit from IPC improvements, extracting higher performance, while offering more AI features across the Ryzen and EPYC series.

Speaking of, the upcoming EPYC "Venice," Ryzen Desktop "Olympic Ridge," and Ryzen Mobile "Medusa Point" chips will be built on the Zen 6 architecture, with more lineups to follow. AMD's Helios server-rack solutions will also be powered by Zen 6's EPYC Venice, paired with CDNA 5 GPUs using 5th gen Infinity Fabric with 224 GB/s of bandwidth.

Next up is Zen 7, still a couple of years away and fabricated on what AMD's calling a "Future Node." This is AMD's true next-gen product, implying a major shakeup is inbound. Zen 7 will debut a "New Matrix Engine" with even more AI functionality, but that's where the details stop — core configs, cache layout, and so on are at the mercy of leaks.

Current speculation puts Zen 7 at somewhere around 2027-2028 with EPYC "Verano" data center CPUs expected to be its first product. The rest of the roadmap is just a retrospective, boasting how far AMD has come since AM5's launch a little over three years ago, going from 5nm to 2nm in just a span of four years. Since Financial Analyst Day is aimed at investors, there was more focus on artificial intelligence ambitions than thorough technical insight.

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