10 July 20, 06:10
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Mo' workstations, mo' Threadripper?
Lenovo recently revealed via a short Twitter video that it's gearing up to release a new workstations on July 14. Lenovo's upcoming launch seemingly ties in with the recent rumors of AMD releasing a Ryzen Threadripper Pro series of CPUs.
A couple of days ago, a photograph of an alleged Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX processor surfaced in the Chiphell forums. While the photograph looks questionable, the forum user claimed that AMD is planning on giving its Ryzen Threadripper 3000-series (codename Castle Peak) the Pro treatment.
The rumor about a Ryzen Threadripper Pro series gained traction because of the appearance of the TRX80 and WRX80 chipsets before the Ryzen Threadripper 3000-series' official launch. The original speculation was that the "8" in the chipset name refers to eight memory channels, thus, allowing for up to 2TB of memory. We usually see leaks or test submissions prior to a processor launch, but we've haven't seen much in the way of Ryzen Threadripper Pro leaks. In any event, treat them with some caution.
If genuine, the Ryzen Threadripper Pro should be similar to what the Ryzen Pro line offers to mainstream CPU shoppers. That means it should follow the same winning formula: the Zen 2 microarchitecture with TSMC's 7nm FinFET manufacturing process.
The Ryzen Threadripper Pro series would likely come with the same CPU core and clock speed specifications as their non-Pro counterparts but with support for more rumored memory channels and, perhaps, added security features. For reference, the current Ryzen Threadripper 3000-series processors and TRX40 platform feature support for quad-channel RAM. Thus far, only Epyc (codename Rome) processors, which targets servers, can leverage eight-channel memory.
If you believe in coincidences, a Lenovo system (via @_rogame) entered the Basemark database in December 2019 with an unidentified AMD processor. The 64-core chip seemingly sported the 100-000000087-03_42/30_Y codename. The OPN (ordering part number) for the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is 100-000000163. Therefore, there's speculation that the CPU spotted in Basemark last year could be the purported Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX that recently showed up in the the Chiphell forums.
The launch of Ryzen Threadripper Pro doesn't seem unlikely when you look at AMD's product stack. The new core-heavy processors could very well bridge the gap between the Threadripper and Epyc lines.
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