AMD's first Zen desktop CPUs to be named Summit Ridge

Word leaked online that AMD's first Zen-based desktop processors are codenamed Summit Ridge. Swedish tech site Sweclockers writes this chip will replace the three-year old Bulldozer architecture and that it will be launched on 14nm, suggesting it will be fabbed by either GlobalFoundries or Samsung.

Summit Ridge is expected to be more power efficient with TDPs of maximum 95W, far less than the excessive TDP of the current high-end models. The first Zen chips promise up to eight cores and are anticipated to feature DDR4 support, an unknown number of integrated PCI Express 3.0 lanes, and a new FM3 socket. It's unknown of the chip will have integrated graphics.

Additionally, there are also rumors that AMD is planning to switch to Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) reather than Cluster-based Multithreading (CMP), which would result in 16 threads on the 8 core versions, similar to Intel's HyperThreading.

The bad news however is that Summit Ridge isn't expected to be released until Q3 2016.