AMD, the US chipmaker, has revealed details of Zen 6, its next generation of processors for data centres.
Rather than building one chip that does everything, it has created two versions designed for different jobs.
One is built for speed, while the other packs in as many processing units as possible.
Speed or scale
A processor is made up of cores, which each handle tasks independently, so more cores means a chip can do more things at once.
Clock speed, measured in gigahertz (GHz), is how fast each core works.
AMD's densest Zen 6 chip has 256 cores running at about 4.1 GHz.
Its fastest, the EPYC 9686F, has 96 cores running at up to 5.3 GHz.
AMD's current generation tops out at 192 cores.
The company says each core can also get through about 27% more work per tick of the clock than before, on average, across business, cloud and AI tasks.
The improvement ranges from 20% to 31% depending on the job, according to The Register.
No single chip offers the top core count, top speed and biggest improvement all at once.
Taking on Nvidia
AMD is also using Zen 6 to build Verano, a chip designed specifically for AI systems.
Its job is to feed data to AMD's graphics processors, which do the heavy lifting in AI.
Verano also comes in two versions: 72 fast cores at up to 5.3 GHz or 192 cores at up to 4.1 GHz.
It uses the same type of memory found in laptops, which can move data at about 800 GB a second.
AMD is aiming at Nvidia's Vera Rubin system, which combines an 88-core processor and a large amount of memory with two of Nvidia's AI chips.
AMD wants its complete system, combining Verano with its own graphics processors, to compete head-on.
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