AMD Zen 8 core high enthusiast Summit Ridge CPUs are allegedly slated for a January 2016 release on the new AM4 socket. A source close to AMD claims that the eight core Summit Ridge CPU dies have taped out in January and are running through testing and validation right now.

This is the second major milestone that we've heard about concerning Zen's development The first being the tape out of the Zen core / microarchitecture back in 2015 and the secondbeing the tape out of the eight core Zen based SOC in January. This means that not only has the core design been finalized, but development of the first product chip with Zen cores has been completed. This is the eight core 95W Zen SOCwhich will be coming to the desktop later in the year. AMD has severalotherZen basedSOCs - systems on a chip -in development. A 32 Core Zen server CPU, a sixteen core Zen HPC APU and a quadcore Zen consumer APU. All of which should be taped out sometime laterthis year.

The desktop FX CPUs allegedly feature a 95W TDP and eight high performance Zen cores with multi-threading for a total of 16 threads. Zen is said to have extremely competitive single threaded performance according to engineerswith knowledge of the chip.Citingmoreinstructions per clock than Intel's Broadwell and just a smidgen behind Skylake. The 95W TDP if accurate indicates that indeed we're looking at a very power efficient design. In contrast, Intel's eight core i7 5960X is rated at 140 watts but then again we're comparing a 14nm FinFETproduct with a 22nm chip so a delta is to be expected.

AMD Zen 8 Core 95W Summit Ridge CPUs To Be ReleasedInJanuary 2016

We published an exclusive report last year detailing AMD's plans to introduce its Zen based FX CPUs later this year and Zen based APUs in 2017. We also broke downdetails about Zen CPUs, APUs, AM4 motherboards and the features of AMD's next generation platform whichhaven't been made public yet. So wewouldhighly recommend that you go check out that reportif you're interested in finding out more about Zen.

Suffice to say allthe leaks and whispers we've seen and heard thus far about AMD Zen CPUs on the desktop indicate that the chips will launch at CES next year. Although I should still point out that AMD's official word is still "late 2016" without any specificity. Despite the growing number of credibleleaks which have consistently pointed towards a CES launch. Until AMD makes an official announcement, all of its plans are subject to change.

Desktop Zen CPUs arepart of the"Summit Ridge" family. Which isgoing to include a full lineup of high-end Zen based CPUs that will feature"high core counts" and compete in the "enthusiast" segment according to AMD. That is, they're going to be lined-up to compete against Intel's Haswell-E and Broadwell-E products.

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AMD Zen Desktop CPUs Are Shaping Up To Be Everything That Enthusiasts Have Been AskingFor

Zen has beenone of the most hotly anticipated AMD products in a decade. It's the company's first attempt to compete at the high-end CPU space in five years. In many ways Zen also represents the company's first truly innovative next generation architecture that's also on process node parity with Intel since the Athlon days. What has lendthe tech community evenmore optimism is that Zen harkens back to AMD's glorified Athlon days in another even more crucialaspect. Zen is a brand new clean-slate design that's been led from the get-go by accomplished CPU architect Jim Keller. The very same person that brought us the original Athlon XP and Athlon64 processors. AMD's most successful products ever.

We saw this optimism reflected atCES by AMD's CEO.

"The overall expectation is that AMD will be a better year from a financial standpoint compared to 2015,”

Su went on to state that she has full confidence that by CES next year everyone will say"AMD is back!".

Up until May of last year very little was known about AMD's next generation high performance, high IPC, 14nm CPU core. However, we've learned so much about it since then through a consecutive set of Linux Kernel patches and leaks. Which have been very instrumental in helping us understand the inner workings of Zen's micro-architecture and what it's capable of.

Back when AMD announced Zen for the very first time, publicly, at its Financial Analyst Day last year, the company touted a 40% improvement in instructions per clock versus its latest high performance core Excavator. However, during last quarter's earnings conference call President and CEO of the company Lisa Su announced that Zen is performing beyond initial expectations and that engineers have managed to achieve a greater than40% IPC improvement.

AMD Preisdent & CEO Lisa Su - Q4 2015 AMD Earnings Call Transcript

Our Zen-based CPU development is on track to achieve greater than 40% IPC uplift from our previous generation and we're on schedule to samplelater this year.

In client computing, our opportunities to regain share in 2016 will be driven by our design win momentum, continued progress expanding into

the commercial market, and reentering the high-performance desktop market late in the year with our Zen-based Summit Ridge CPU.

AMD announced that later this year it will be introducingan entirely new line-up of FX CPUs and a brand new platform ‘AM4″. These new FX CPUs are what AMD is referring to as“Summit Ridge”. The new platform will include a new socketwithDDR4 memory support.AM4 will also support upcoming Bristol Ridge APUs. This is in effort tounify all of APU & CPU desktop platformsunder one roof instead of the current bifurcation between AM3+ and FM2+.

The AIDA64 benchmark added support to Zen based Summit Ridge as well as Raven Ridge FX CPUs and APUs last year. Raven Ridge will succeed Bristol Ridge and will be the first generation of APUs to feature Zen, while Bristrol Ridge will be a refresh based on the 28nm Excavator core.Several leakshave also revealed thatAMD is working on several ZenAPUs with large discrete class built-in GPUs and high bandwidth memory.

On the server side AMD is preparing Zen based CPUs with up to 32 cores and 64 threads. That's four times as many threads as AMD's current highest end server offering.A very significant jump that's going to play a crucial role in giving Zen the competitive edge it needs in servers. A market that Intel has virtually monopolized with97% market share.

AMD Zen FX CPUsWill Launch On A Modern, More Comprehensive, Feature Packed Platform

In our exclusive report we published last year we shared the details that have been made available to us about AMD's Summit Ridge processors coming later this year. For starts Summit Ridge CPUs will include models with eight, six and four Zen cores. Four cores being the lowest core count Summit Ridge CPU AMD is going to sell. All CPUs will include the company's new platform security processor, PCIe 3.0 support, dual channel DDR4 memory controllers, copious amounts of L3 cache and updated storage features.

AMD's plan, our sources tellus, is to price high core count parts very competitively.UndercuttingIntel's mainstream CPUsbyofferingmore cores with competitive - Broadwell level - single threaded performance at Intel's mainstream i5 and quadcore i7 price points. Essentially offering Haswell-E / Broadwell-E comparable parts in the mainstream $400-$150 segment. Aspace that's currentlyoccupied by Intel's mainstream quadcore I7, i5 and dual core i3 CPUs .

This is possible becausewe're told the Zencore itself is very areaand power efficient. So AMD can build high core count chips that are still small, with good yields and at reasonable cost. Imagine an eight core Haswell-E equivalentchipthe size of aCarrizoAPU. We're set to see a CPU price war take place later this year like we haven't for nearly a decade.

AMD Next Gen CPU Families: