AMD Confirms Hybrid ‘Zen4C’ & ‘Zen4’ Phoenix 2 APUs in ROCm

Kepler shared a post on Twitter from AMD’s ROCm Developer Tools over at GitHub. A few lines of code have officially confirmed the existence of another type of Phoenix APUs, namely Phoenix 2. Do note that this is not the first time we’re hearing about this lineup of APUs, more on that in a bit.

Phoenix 2 Confirmed

The following lines of code show that Phoenix 2 is very well in AMD’s to-do list, once they formally launch Phoenix Point or Phoenix 1 APUs. The indicated GPU IP Block is ‘gfx1103‘, similar to Phoenix 1. This indicates that both lineup of APUs will feature the same graphics blocks.

Readers should be aware that Phoenix 2 is not a direct successor to Phoenix Point (1). That title would go to the upcoming next-gen Strix Point APUs. Phoenix 2 may serve as an intermediary between the both or could be developed for niche use cases, given its structure.

Specifications

Phoenix 2 may be the first CPUs to utilize AMD’s Zen4C (Zen4-based little/efficient core) cores. They have been leaked many times to do so. In a now-deleted tweet by All The Watts, we managed to scrape out a bit of information regarding Phoenix 2.

PHX2:
TSMC N4
2c Zen 4 (4MB L3, 2MB L2)
4c Zen 4C (4MB L3, 4MB L2)
2 WGP RDNA3 (GC 11.0.4)
DDR5/LPDDR5X
15-28w

The only key difference is the massively reduced WGP (WorkGroup Processor) count and lower per-core cache. Intel on the other hand utilizes two very different architectures for its approach, which is precisely why Alder Lake (and above) does not support AVX512 instructions.

The power that AMD’s Ryzen 7040HS processors boast, is not hidden from anyone. However, AMD still has not launched these processors due to various delays so we’ll wait for detailed reviews. Similarly, the Ryzen 7040U series, which was not announced at CES has been making headlines recently.

The ASUS Rog Ally, powered by AMD’s Z1 Extreme APUs shows impressive performance, at least on paper. As for the APU itself, the Z1 Extreme can be a slightly better binned and optimized version of 7840U.

It may very well be possible that the next Steam Deck could make use of AMD’s upcoming Phoenix Point APUs. Since Strix Point is due next year (probably) and won’t feature a completely new GPU architecture (RDNA3+), we cannot say much about the performance. Although, these APUs can be especially helpful in designing inexpensive and capable-enough laptops for students.