AMD’s new Phoenix 2 APU architecture has been pictured with Zen 4C cores. We have shots of how the Phoenix 2 architecture looks and what it features in better detail. So, let’s discuss what we know about the AMD Ryzen Phoenix 2 Hybrid APU architecture, which brings Zen 4 cores for efficiency onboard. Here are all the details.
AMD Phoenix 2 Zen 4C APU Pictured
AMD’s hybrid APU architecture with Zen 4C cores has been pictured, with an image being shared on X (formerly Twitter) recently. In this, we can clearly see various elements of the AMD Phoenix 2 APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) architecture, with Zen 4C cores.
These are slightly different from traditional CPUs as the point of an APU is to pack sufficient power in both the CPU and GPU departments, all on a single chip. You can learn about what is an APU in this dedicated explainer. Below is the Phoenix 2 APU die shot shared by HXL on Twitter.
According to HXL, the top-left shows the Zen 4C cores, which are ‘efficiency cores‘ designed specifically with lower power consumption. The leaker also stated the Zen 4C cores will feature multithreading, making this above Phoenix 2 APU have a total of 12 threads.
David Huang, a hardware enthusiast, did a deep dive into Phoenix 2. He shared the location of where the different Zen 4 cores lie. We can see the GPU’s workgroup processors (RDNA 3 WGP), as well as the ‘Zen 4 classic‘ (Zen 4) and ‘Zen 4 dense‘ (Zen 4C) cores. As you can see here, the L3 cache has also been highlighted.
Ryzen Z1 Chip Found with Phoenix 2 Codename
Previously, it was assumed that the Ryzen Z1 Series processors found in handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go were pretty much the same processor as the Ryzen 7 7840U that is used in laptops.
Asus had already shared a clarification about the architecture with us during the review period of the ROG Ally handheld. The Ryzen Z1 is AMD’s chip dedicated to handhelds and is optimized accordingly. This new data confirms the differences – the Z1 chips do use Zen4C cores. Previously, Tomshardware also requested a clarification from AMD. The response they received essentially confirmed the ‘purpose-built for handheld’ nature of the chip.
So yes, the Ryzen Z1 Series (Z1 & Z1 Extreme) processors are similar to the 7840U. But Ryzen Z1 is codenamed with Phoenix 2 as David’s analysis revealed in the HWInfo application. The screenshot below confirms the same:
The Z1 chips also don’t support the AMD Ryzen AI engine. The enthusiast who did a deep dive into Phoenix 2 shared plenty of benchmarks. Below are some of the benchmarks shared by him, also comparing the Phoenix 2-based Ryzen Z1 against the 7840U. You can have a look at how the Ryzen Z1 Extreme performs in our ROG Ally review. We have benchmarked & compared it against desktop CPUs as well as leading laptop CPUs like the i9-12900H.
So, what are your thoughts on AMD Ryzen Phoenix 2 APU? Are you excited about future budget chips from AMD with this kind of hybrid APU architecture? Let us know in the comments below.
