AMD starts prep work for Zen 5 CPUs — multiple Linux patches signal Zen 5's upcoming arrival

AMD's official roadmap points toward a 2025 release for Zen 4, which aligns with the timing of these Linux patches for new AMD CPUs.
AMD's official roadmap points toward a 2025 release for Zen 4, which aligns with the timing of these Linux patches for new AMD CPUs. (Image credit: AMD)

Over the past two days, six patches for AMD's Power Management Controller driver have been released on Linux. As reported by Phoronix, these PMC driver patches for yet-unreleased Family 1Ah CPUs most likely refer to AMD's Zen 5 CPUs, which will compete with the best CPUs. One of the most essential functionalities the PMC enables is various sleep states, including "s2idle", a software-only system sleep state.

As crucial as these six patches are to underlying system functionality, they only modify two dozen lines of code and don't reveal much else, at least on a surface-level inspection.

That said if we consider the timing of these driver patches just ahead of 2024 and the steady stream of AMD Family 1Ah Linux patches we've been seeing since July of this year, it seems like AMD is intent on laying the needed groundwork for a Zen 5 release for Linux operating systems as quickly as possible.

The pattern of these releases may mean that AMD plans to launch Zen 5 earlier in 2024 than Zen 4 and Zen 3, which were both Q4 releases of their respective years. Last week's leak of a next-gen Zen 5c EPYC CPU also leans toward this, though the CPU in question is technically an engineering sample and not the final CPU.

One anticipated feature of the Zen 5 will be the Navi/RDNA 3.5 iGPU architecture. Zen 5 iGPU leaks allegedly point toward iGPU designs with as many as 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units, several CUs comparable to the RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 6750 XT, which competes with the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti. Power like that will likely allow AMD to regain their iGPU performance lead from Meteor Lake's Arc graphics in Linux.

The potential of AMD RDNA 3.5 iGPUs in Linux may also start pushing us closer toward the Steam Deck 2, or at least better competition for the Steam Deck OLED and ROG Ally, which top out at 8 RDNA 2 CUs and 4 RDNA 3 CUs, respectively.

Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

  • usertests
    I'm eager to learn what the differences between RDNA3 and RDNA3.5 will be.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    usertests said:
    I'm eager to learn what the differences between RDNA3 and RDNA3.5 will be.
    I'm wondering if there is going to be a RDNA 3.5 Highend card since RDNA 4 doesn't look to have one.
    Reply