Like the socket AM4, inaugurated in March 2017 and which has accompanied several generations of Ryzen, the socket AM5 is also assured of a beautiful longevity.
At CES 2022, Lisa Su announced the color about AMD’s future Ryzen processors. Expected during the second half of the year, the Ryzen 7000 will benefit from a 5 nm engraving, a Zen 4 CPU architecture… and will retire the socket AM4 in favor of its successor, logically called AM5. The AM4 has had some great years of service, making its debut in 2017 alongside the very first Ryzen. It has accompanied many series, and the current Ryzen 5000 still use it. According to the CEO of AMD, don’t worry, the AM5 socket will be anything but ephemeral.
A guarantee, but no precise deadline
This is the meaning of the remarks made by Lisa Su to Paul Alcorn of Tom’s Hardware, reported by TechPowerUp. The boss of AMD said that if she could not put forward a specific time, the AM5 would last for a long time.
Here is the exact content of the exchanges:
Paul Alcorn asked Lisa Su: ” AMD had been committed to using the AM4 platform and socket AM4 for some time [il était prévu pour perdurer jusqu’en 2020 et jusqu’aux Ryzen 2 au départ !]. Can you give us an idea of how long you will be staying on the AM5? “
To which Lisa Su replied: ” Well, we were extremely happy with how the AM4 evolved … We said we would keep this socket for a long time, and we did. We continue to believe that it has been beneficial for the community, and frankly, it has been for us too. But, as we scale things up, it becomes time to make a socket transition, especially for reasons related to new I / O technologies. However, I think our strategy should be similar. I don’t know the exact number of years, but I would say the AM5 is to be expected to be a long-life platform, as the AM4 has been. On the other hand, I also think that the AM4 will remain on the market for a number of years yet and that there will be some kind of overlap. “
As Lisa Su points out, the switch to Socket AM5 is indeed motivated by the support of new generations of I / O (DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0).
Farewell PGA, welcome LGA
In addition, another major change that the AM5 socket will bring is the switch to an LGA design (land grid array), as for Intel processors, instead of PGA (pin grid array).
Robert Hallock and Frank Azor, who are respectively technical marketing director and chief architect of AMD gaming solutions, have, during interviews with journalists from different editors, explained the reason for this change.
They argue that the LGA allows a density of transistors for the same surface much greater than the PGA. This design therefore allows the case size of future Ryzen 7000 processors to remain unchanged. As a result, these will be well compatible with heat sinks originally designed for AM4 chips.
Sources: TechPowerUp
, PCWorld
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