AMD Announces the Zen 3 Architecture

AMD announced Zen 3 processors in October 2020 with the Ryzen 5000 desktop family. The most important change was a redesigned core complex that allowed up to eight CPU cores to share one 32 MB L3 cache.

Earlier Zen designs divided cores into smaller groups, so communication and cache access across those groups could carry extra latency. The unified eight-core complex improved gaming and other latency-sensitive workloads. AMD also increased instructions per clock substantially while staying on TSMC’s 7 nm manufacturing process.

Zen 3 was a milestone because AMD no longer competed mainly by offering more cores for less money. In many workloads it challenged or surpassed Intel in single-threaded performance as well, completing the turnaround that had started with the first Ryzen generation.