Leaked roadmap of AMD’s laptop CPUs could give Intel nightmares

AMD’s roadmap for its future APUs in 2021 and 2022 has been leaked, and if this spillage is correct (keep your salt shaker handy as ever) it highlights some interesting new points about what we’ll see – Intel certainly won’t sleep easy looking at this little lot.

The leak comes from Rogame on Twitter, as spotted by VideoCardz, and seemingly we’ll see refreshed Zen 3 APUs (‘Rembrandt’) in 2022, which will be Zen 3+ chips built on a 6nm process (something that’s been previously rumored).

[AMD APUs for 2022] 🧐Rembrandt-H | 45W | Zen3+ | Navi2 | 6nm | LPDDR5/DDR5Rembrandt-U | 15W | Zen3+ | Navi2 | 6nm | LPDDR5/DDR5Barcelo-U | 15W | Zen3 | Vega 7 | 7nmDragonCrest | 9W | Zen2 | Navi2 | 7nm | LPDDR5Pollock | 4.5W | Zen | Vega | 14nmDecember 19, 2020

Those will be the successor to ‘Cezanne’ laptop CPUs (Zen 3 on 7nm) which are coming next year, and indeed the rumor mill has been chock-full of speculation about that silicon of late, with the expectation being that AMD will reveal Ryzen 5000 mobile offerings at CES in January 2021.

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Cezanne products will have integrated Vega 7 graphics, coming alongside ‘Lucienne’ (Zen 2 mobile silicon), with both these families making up the Ryzen 5000 range as we’ve already heard. That’s important, as obviously only the Cezanne silicon will move to Zen 3 and therefore get that vital architectural uplift in IPC (instructions per clock) performance.

Then, later in 2021 we will see ‘Van Gogh’ turn up, which will pair Zen 2 architecture with Navi 2 graphics (with a TDP of only 9W). These APUs will also bring in support for LPDDR5 memory for further performance benefits on laptops.

The Zen 3+ Rembrandt APUs will also use Navi 2 graphics when they turn up in 2022, according to this speculation, and of course support LPDDR5 and DDR5.

AMD’s armory

The leak shares a couple of other families for 2022, including ‘Barcelo’ which will be a Cezanne-U refresh and Lucienne-U successor (the ‘U’ chips are the low-power variety for efficient running in laptops), apparently maintaining Vega 7 graphics. ‘Pollock’ supposedly consists of APUs built on the original Zen architecture and a 14nm process with Vega graphics, but demanding just 4.5W in terms of power consumption.

2022 will also purportedly bring a Van Gogh refresh in the form of ‘Dragon Crest’, so along with the new Rembrandt silicon arriving in that year, AMD certainly has plenty of avenues of attack for the future in terms of laptop processors.

That will doubtless be a serious concern for Intel, which is already facing a major threat from Cezanne, APUs that should be imminent as mentioned – Intel’s Tiger Lake mobile CPUs may be competitive now, but could pale in comparison to these new Ryzen 5000 offerings.

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