AMD to Use New Naming System on 2023 Mobile Chipsets
AMD announced today that it will use a new naming system for its expanding mobile PC processor family starting in 2023.
“[The] increasing appetite for Ryzen has prompted reinvestment in all-new processor categories for 2023, such as ‘Mendocino’ for feature-rich notebooks around $500 or ‘Dragon Range’ for top-tier gaming,” a new AMD blog post explains. “What to call these products is an important decision, and we know that model numbers are something you often talk about in your communities as well.”
To address its expanding family of mobile PC microprocessors, AMD will use a new naming system for these chipsets starting with the 2023 versions: the firm says that its current naming system cannot accommodate all of the new product families. And in starting over, it wanted to make the names as easily decodable as possible: higher numbers been better performance, for example, and each processor family has a common set of capabilities.
“If you see a processor that is AMD Ryzen xx4x, you’re looking at a chip with ‘Zen 4’ inside,” the company continues. “If you see a processor with AMD Ryzen xx30, it’s ‘Zen 3’. And Ryzen xx35 is ‘Zen 3+’. If the processor starts with a ‘7xxx,’ you know you’re looking at a current product in AMD’s 2023 portfolio. And if you don’t know much about what’s inside a processor, a bigger number will simply give you more CPU performance. As an example, AMD displays the graphic above, which it says is for a hypothetical Ryzen 5 7640U processor.
So, from left to right, what you’re seeing is portfolio model year (what Intel calls “generation”), market segment (where 9 is highest), architecture (which version of Zen), feature isolation (minor architecture differences, like Zen 3 vs. Zen 3+), and form factor/TDP. That last one gets complicated: 9-watts is “e”, 15 to 28-watts is “C,” and so on.
For 2023, AMD says it will have five different families of chipsets, each of which will address a particular market segment: the 7020 series (everyday computing), 7030 series (mainstream thin and light), 7035 series (premium thin and light), 7040 series (elite ultrathin), and 7045 series (extreme gaming and creator).