According to one recent report from Taiwan’s most reliable news source Digitimes, AMD has decided to delay the launch of the next-gen Zen 3 architecture based Ryzen 4000 CPU series from September 2020 to early 2021.

This comes via @chiakohua aka RetiredEngineer. AMD was expected to launch ZEN 3 Ryzen 4000 series of processors later this year. The series was slated to utilize an enhanced 7nm manufacturing process node, as per speculation, and a revamped Zen 3 architecture. This should make the architecture even more power-efficient, and also powerful than current Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 series. We can expect significant IPC gains, faster clocks and higher efficiency, and other new features.

The main reason for this delay could be a lack of competition from INTEL, and the strong demand for the current Ryzen 3000 CPU series. DigiTimes’s sources have been very reliable in the past so this could turn out to be true.

The same report also hints that AMD might actually skip the 7nm EUV node, and straight away move to 5nm EUV fabrication node. But if you read the translation done by @chiakohua, this move to shift to 5nm fabrication node is still unclear, so we don’t have any concrete info or confirmation on this issue.

The “translation” of the DigiTimes news has been done by @chiakohua. To quote some of the important points taken from his twitter post:

“According to motherboard manufacturers, due to the pandemic and competitive reasons, Intel and AMD kept changing their 2020 desktop roadmap and launch schedules, causing major headaches for the supply chain. In addition, NVIDIA and AMD are also keeping the launch schedules for their next-gen GPUs secret, to avert pricing manipulations by their opponents.”

“Judging from the way things now look on both sides, AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series, launched since July 2019, will continue to be hot-sellers. Refreshed models coming in June/July are the motherboard manufacturers’ important products for stimulating sales in the second half. In contrast, the earliest Intel will officially launch 10nm desktop processors is at the end of 2021. If Intel does not have any secret weapons during the intervening one-and-a-half years, it’s desktop market share may touch new lows, and AMD can be expected to hit the 30% mark in one fell swoop.”

“According to motherboard manufacturers, sales for Ryzen 3000 series are hot. Accordingly, AMD is extending its life cycle, and definitely will not be launching the next-gen Ryzen 4000 series, based on Zen3 architecture and using TSMC’s 7nm EUV process, in Sep. The earliest Ryzen 4000 series will enter mass production is end of 2020, and launch in Jan 2021 at CES. Whether it will be changed to 5nm EUV process is unclear at the moment. “

UPDATE

AMD has debunked this rumor in a statement to TechPowerUp. Vermeer and Zen 3 CPUs will be coming on time:

“AMD in an official briefing call with us confirmed that the company’s “Zen 3” client processors are on-track for launch within 2020. This refutes rumors that “Zen 3” based Ryzen processors had been delayed to 2021 in favor of giving the upcoming Ryzen 3000XT reign over the rest of the year. The call was chaired by AMD’s client-segment product managers who were speaking purely in context of their product segment, which is how we deduce that they were referring to “Vermeer” and not [just] “Milan.” They were responding to speculation that “Zen 3” has been delayed to 2021, forcing AMD to refresh its existing IP.

In the call, AMD told us that the information about “Zen 3” launching in 2020 is not under embargo, and so here we are. An AMD spokesperson told us that “the rumor on Zen 3 delay is inaccurate.” AMD recently also refuted rumors of “Zen 3” being based on 5 nm, by putting out microarchitecture roadmap slides on the occasion of a recent investor relations event, which reaffirmed “Zen 3″ as a 7 nm-class microarchitecture.”

Thanks TechPowerUp