Something to expect: AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 5000 series, Genesis Peak, is due to be announced in the coming weeks and a recent leak suggests that the 16-core version of the HEDT chip may make a comeback. This is anomalous, as your Ryzen 5950X already has 16 cores, so assuming the information is legitimate, we will have to see if AMD’s assessment of the demand for this core count has been met.
As in previous generations of Ryzen, AMD will continue the successful launch of the Ryzen 5000 series with Genesis Peak, its line of Threadripper CPUs for high-end desktops (HEDT) taking advantage of the new Zen 3 architecture.
In the first two incarnations of Threadripper, the lowest-level HEDT part that AMD sold was a 16-core and 32-thread chip, boasting more cores than the higher-level 8-core consumables. The next release cycle saw the 16-core Ryzen 3950X top the consumer category, with the next best chip being Castle Peak’s 24-core Threadripper 3960X.
It seems that during this cycle, however, AMD may be eager to bring back the 16-core Threadripper SKU while still selling the Ryzen 5950X, its 16-core chip to the consumer. The information comes from a tweet by Yuri Bubliy, also known as 1usmus and developer of Clock Tuner for Ryzen, who published a puzzle of the HEX code, which when converted to ASCII, reads “Genesis 16 cores”.
I think some of you will want to solve this puzzle.
47454e4553495320313620434f524553
– Yuri Bubliy (@ 1usmus) January 1, 2021
If that proves right, we can assume that AMD has found a sweet spot in the 16-core brand, but enough of the market requires high caches, quad channel support and other professional features that come with HEDT chips and the TR4 chipset they find it’s worth making both SKUs. That said, we don’t know whether Genesis Peak will support the current TR4 chipset or whether AMD will require anything new in this cycle.
Another mystery will be the naming scheme of this redone chip, since the Ryzen 5950X has already adopted the nomenclature that the Threadripper x950X already had.
Time will tell when it comes out, and we pray that AMD doesn’t make it more confusing for consumers than it should be. As this is an early leak, there is no sign of a release date, but AMD should talk about Genesis Peak this month at CES 2021.