AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that Zen-3 based processors will be hitting the market later this year. But what’s the point of a new piece of hardware if it can’t run Linux? AMD agrees with us here: Team Red recently added some Zen 3 microcode to the Linux kernel.
What exactly does the new microcode addition do? IT adds EDAC (Error Detection and Correction) family ops code to the Kernel. The leak indicates that the new family ops code was added for Family 19h, which refers to the family of Zen 3 CPUs, as opposed to 17h, which is Zen 2 and the Ryzen 3000 desktop/notebook lineup.
Zen 3 is confirmed and it’s just months away. However, this isn’t the first major leak about the architecture. Team Red themselves accidentally uploaded a video on YouTube with slides on its upcoming, Zen 3-based EPYC Milan processors. AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster said in a recent interview that the company’s target was to exceed 7 percent year-on-year IPC gains.
For Zen 3, things might prove even better. AMD indicated that Zen 3 would be based on an entirely new core architecture: it’s not just an iterative update to Zen 2. This’d mean performance gains potentially as high as 20 percent. Let’s see if this year’s Ryzen 4000 processors beat that out. What we do know for sure is that Bionic Beaver, Disco Dingo, Eoan Ermine, and all your favorite adjective-animal buddies are ready to go on Zen 3.
