AMD is already prepping a 3nm update to its new Zen 5 CPUs

AMD's new Zen 5 CPUs, AKA the Ryzen 9000 series, are shaping up very nicely indeed. But if there is a doubt over AMD's latest CPU family, it's that it carries over essentially the same 4nm silicon as Zen 4. Well, not for long, it turns out.

AMD's long-time leading chip maestro Mike Clark, who has worked on AMD CPU designs for over 30 years, says that plans are afoot for a 3nm respin of the Zen 5 architecture. What's more, it's all happening very fast.

Speaking to Tom's Hardware, Clark said that AMD wanted the the flexibility of using both nodes for Zen 5 despite the challenges that posed. 

«We need that flexibility in our roadmap, and it makes sense. But still that was really hard to try to control having the two technologies and the features, and a feature that looks great in 3nm not looking so great in 4nm because of the power impact of the not-as-efficient transistor and how it affects the floorplan,» Clark said.

Interestingly, from a timing perspective it sounds like 3nm Zen 3 could be along very soon. «We're going to deliver 3nm here in short order with 4nm; basically, they're on top of each other,» Clark revealed.

Previously there have been rumours that 3nm would be used for the Zen 5C compact core rather than the full Zen 5 design. However, Clark didn't talk specifics, so we'll have to wait and see about that.

For our money, the chip we'd most like to see make the jump to 3nm is AMD's APU line for laptops and handhelds. Seeing the new Strix Point APU using 4nm silicon is a bit of a worry for battery life.

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AMD's existing Phoenix and Hawk Point APUs don't exactly offer great battery life in a handheld gaming context using 4nm silicon. So, the prospect of an even more powerful chip on 4nm with more GPU cores hardly bodes well for battery life.

Of course, as we discussed recently, it turns out that the revised RDNA 3.5 GPU in Strix Point has been tweaked to improve