AMD has announced a 64-core Ryzen Threadripper 3990X CPU model that will be launched in 2020. The news comes at the same time as its 32-core 3970X and 24-core 3960X models have gone on sale. Very few concrete details about this new flagship model are known at the moment, but AMD has no doubt timed the announcement to strategically take focus from the launch of Intel's Cascade Lake-X refresh of the high-end Core X-series processors, which also go on sale today. AMD has claimed that the already-announced 32-core and 24-core Ryzen Threadripper models beat Intel's previous-generation offerings, so the new 64-core CPU should deflect some attention from the gains Intel makes with Cascade Lake-X.
The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X will have 64 cores with 128 threads thanks to simultaneous multi-threading. It will have 288MB of total cache memory, including the L2 and L3 caches. The company has also announced that it will have a 280W TDP rating which is the same as those of the lower-end third-generation Threadripper[1] series. Clock speeds and other details have not yet been announced.
AMD[2] has used a modular design[3] with its third-generation Ryzen CPUs, based on the Zen 2 architecture. Using small chiplets with 8 cores each, the company can build various different CPUs from the same building blocks. The mainstream Ryzen models[4] use one or two such chiplets, while the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X has four, for 32 cores, and so the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X will feature eight, judging by AMD's promotional photo. These chiplets are manufactured on a 7nm process and all connect to a central IO die.
Specifics of the architecture, the price, and even a rough launch timeframe have not yet been announced. It is not...