AMD introduces Ryzen brand for highly anticipated Zen-based desktop processors

Advanced Micro Devices is taking a swing at Intel with Ryzen in a move that it hopes will reinvigorate the computer industry. Ryzen is the new brand name being announced today for AMD’s flagship desktop processor that will be introduced in the first quarter.

Formerly known under the code name Summit Ridge, Ryzen is the first processor that will be based on AMD’s highly touted Zen design, which took four years to design and could be AMD’s most competitive processor architecture in a decade. Ryzen will debut in the first quarter at a base speed of 3.4 gigahertz. It will have eight cores and 16 threads (or 16 programs that can run simultaneously), 20 megabytes of secondary memory known as cache, and a new power-saving technology called the AMD SenseMI.

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, made the announcement at an event in Sonoma, California. She has high hopes for Ryzen and all of the Sunnyvale, California-based company’s processor and graphics products, including the Radeon Instinct chips announced yesterday. AMD plans to launch Zen-based server chips, dubbed Naples, in the second quarter, and Zen-based process-graphics combo chips (accelerated processing units, or APUs), code-named Raven Ridge, in the second half of 2017.

“We believe, whether you’re talking about desktop or servers, there are portions of the market that are not served well by the products that are there today,” Su said in an interview with VentureBeat. “I absolutely believe we’ll grow share. We’ll see how much we grow as the products roll out. But we feel very good about where we are.”

:story: VentureBeat