Following Intel's big announcement and updates on its new Coffee Lake processor release, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has reportedly decided to up the ante, as the Pinnacle Ridge Ryzen processor line from Intel's competition is getting a refresh early next year.
As confirmed by DigiTimes, AMD has plans to launch its upgrade for the relatively fresh Ryzen series processors, this time using a 12nm low-power (12LP) process. Come February, the flagship central processing unit (CPU), Pinnacle 7 is to be released, followed by the mid-range Pinnacle 5 and the budget Pinnacle 3 sometime in March 2018. With this in mind, AMD is confident that their share of the CPU market will increase by 30 percent next year.
The Pinnacle Ridge processors are the upgraded versions of the Ryzen processor line, which AMD released back in March. The upgrade will feature a performance boost and will use the same socket as the Ryzen. Despite the backward-compatibility for the CPU socket, Pinnacle is reported to have its own corresponding motherboard line to be released in March 2018, as well as the 400 series, which will entail with X470- or B450-based motherboards.
AMD is dedicating part of the success of their Ryzen line of processors to Microsoft and Sony for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, both of which use AMD processors. The Ryzen has also seen increasing demands in the PC market, and the demand for their graphics processing unit (GPU) Radeon has also grown. Both have been responsible for the company's growth in the second half of 2017.
Still, PC Games Network expressed their surprise at AMD's announcement to upgrade their CPUs so soon after the release of its newest Ryzen processor line, especially since AMD has not even released the mobile/laptop versions of the said processor line.
A leaked roadmap of AMD's plans for its processors also reveals that it will supposedly have a yearly upgrade schedule. In 2019, users will see AMD release the Matisse line of processor upgrades, which will introduce Zen 2 cores and will have the same backward-compatibility as the Pinnacle.
AMD, however, has refused to comment on unreleased products. PC owners excited for an upgrade may wait for further announcements before making their decisions on which CPU to purchase.
