AMD Demos Beastly 32-Core 2nd Gen Threadripper, 7nm Vega With 32GB HBM2

After the splash that AMD made with Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper in 2017, it should come as no surprise that AMD would follow-up with second generation variants. We've already seen the mainstream side of things with the Ryzen 2000 Series processors, and now at an event at Computex 2018, AMD has just announced its second-generation Ryzen Threadripper family.

Like the Ryzen 2000 series, second-generation Ryzen Threadripper processors are based on 12nm Zen+ architecture. That means that the new High-End Desktop (HEDT) processors offer lower latencies, higher clock speeds, and Precision Boost 2 capabilities for finer-grained clock control.

AMD isn't giving away too many details on the new processors at this moment, but it did reveal this scintillating piece of news. The flagship second-generation Ryzen Threadripper processor will have a total of 32 physical cores capable of executing 64 simultaneous threads. For those keeping score, the current Ryzen Threadripper 1950X has 16 cores/32 threads. We should also mention that on a pure core/thread basis, this will also put AMD ahead of Intel's incoming Core-X processor which it demonstrated recently with 28 cores/56 threads and will ship in Q4 2018.

The beastly 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper has four 8-core Ryzen dies on-package connected with AMD's Infinity Fabric. We should also mention that the incoming crop of Ryzen Threadripper processors are still compatible with the TR4 socket, which means that they will be able to drop-in to current motherboards without issue (after a quick BIOS update, of course). 

AMD showed a brief demo of a new 24-core version of Ryzen Threadripper (32GB DDR4-2666) pitted up against the 18-core Intel Core i9-7980XE (32GB DDR4-3200) in Blender, and the AMD part of course finished first by a notable margin. AMD also upped the stakes with volumetric lighting in a second run with a 32-core version machine as well, but didn't invite the Intel chip along for comparison's sake that time around.

AMD isn't giving us an exact launch date for the second-generation Ryzen Threadripper family, but the company did note that it will debut during the third quarter this year.

AMD also announced that its first 7nm parts will be Vega GPUs that will power its Radeon Instinct family of accelerators. AMD has beefed up 7nm Vega with improved deep learning performance and there will be SKUs with up to 32GB of HBM2 on-board.

Going to 7nm allowed the company to double compute unit density, improve power efficiency by 2x and boost performance by 1.35x. AMD also demoed the GPU running Cinema 4D to show that it has working silicon as it preps for launch, which it somewhat vaguely pegged for 2H 2018.

Finally, AMD gave us just a brief glimpse at its upcoming second-generation EPYC processor family. It too is based on 7nm process tech, and will be socket-compatible with first-generation parts. AMD CEO Lisa Su mentioned that the chips are already running in the company's labs and are looking "really good" at this point. AMD will begin shipping EPYC 2 some time in 2019 if all goes according to plan.