At the at the Credit Suisse 19th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference earlier this month AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed that the company is working on several generations to succeed Zen. A high-end Zen+ processor is said to be in the works, aimed at datacentre applications, but it will be a three to five year effort to see it released.
AMD's Zen processors are expected to become available next year. It difficult to know when the first new architecture processors will arrive; we have seen notice that AM4 motherboards supporting Zen could be launched in March but AMD will also be launching compatible seventh generation A-Series Desktop APUs to make use of these motherboards. Previously all signs pointed to a Q4 2016 launch/release for Zen processors.
Here's the full quote by Dr Su (via WCCF Tech), which is a response to a question about AMD's Zen datacentre plans:
"I think Zen is the first of a multi-year strategy so you know again you ask me what are my thoughts around the company I think AMD at our core we are a high performance computing company and so you know Zen is a from scratch architectural design, for those of us who do those you know it takes a lot of work. It’s a multi-year effort but I think it’s a multi-year effort that we can see coming to fruition. And so what datacenter customers want from us is one we want you to be competitive and two we want a long term roadmap. And so we’ve really talked about Zen+, Zen follow ons, as you know a three to five year view of what’s needed to be successful in the datacenter."
You can see a video from the AMD Financial Analyst Day where CTO Mark Papermaster talks about a sustained development of the Zen architecture and promises that Zen will not be "a flash in the pan," without follow-up.
AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.12
AMD has released a new graphics driver. The Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.12 is pretty much identical to the 15.11.1 update driver but carries Microsoft WHQL certification. It has the same resolved and known issues listed in the release notes.
