AMD Zen desktop CPUs launch in Q1 2017, server parts in Q2

Speaking to investors during the company's quarterly earnings call, AMD CEO Lisa Su said Zen remains on track for an early 2017 launch. The desktop processors will be the first to arrive, these will ship in Q1 2017, whereas the first Zen-based server chips follow in Q2 2017.

Furthermore, she remarked customer and partner excitement about Summit Ridge is growing:

Su: Customer and partner excitement for our Zen based desktop product Summit Ridge is growing as we successfully passed several key engineering and design win milestones in the quarter. We provided our first competitive performance preview of Summit Ridge in the quarter and believe we will have a very competitive offering for the $4 billion high performance desktop processor market.

We are working closely with our infrastructure partners and customers in preparation for the launch in early 2017. In graphics, we had a very strong quarter with discrete GPU revenue and unit shipments growing by double-digit percentages sequentially and year-over-year.

Later in the earnings call, Su remarked there may be some production samples this quarter, but the volume launch is definitely Q1 2017. This implies we may start seeing some good performance leaks towards the end of the year!