The confirmation comes from AMD’s recent 2nd gen EPYC launch event (via TechPowerUp). The slides suggest there will be no more intermediary steps in its architecture nomenclature, as has previously been the case – such as the shift from Zen to Zen+. It would appear the shift from 7nm to 7nm+ has been deemed worthy of the Zen 3 title. But while that may imply its a more significant step up on Zen 2 than Zen+ was to Zen, there has never been any mention of Zen 2+, so it’s not like anything appears to have changed over at the red camp.

TSMC’s 7nm+ would be able to offer a performance increase inline with AMD’s previous Ryzen refresh of around 10% according to the pure-play foundry. TSMC’s refined 7nm node, N7+, will utilise extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV. Using a short 13.5nm wavelength, EUV is intended to speed up semiconductor manufacturing by reducing the necessary masking and processes required by longer wavelengths to create today’s minuscule processors.

A Zen 2 refresh on the new node seems the likely direction for team red, instead leaving the big changes to Zen 4 in 2021. But we can’t say for sure just yet. Over at AMD’s EPYC launch event the company also confirmed the Zen 4 architecture is in design stage, but, seeing as AMD’s confirmed ‘leapfrogging’ design teams in the past, that’s to be expected.

Zen 4 will likely utilise the 6nm process node: a refined variant of the 7nm process node. Yep, process node naming is often gibberish. While TSMC is well on its way to 5nm, the 6nm node may make for a better fit for AMD as it follows all the same design rules as the 7nm node it currently employs with Zen 2.

AMD’s backwards compatibility pledge also ends next year, which will likely see Zen 3 the last to utilise the AM4 socket and Zen 4 the first of a new socket cycle. Maybe it’s time, the AM4 socket has been with us since 2016.

According to IHS Markit (via DigiTimes), Intel still retains the top spot as the biggest, baddest silicon manufacturer around, its revenue of $15.5bn over the last three months securing it the title for the third consecutive quarter. It won this title from Samsung last year when memory prices came crashing down to all-time lows.

NAND flash revenue was in a sharp, 35% decline during Q2, 2018, and SSDs are now cheaper than ever. While it’s still in decline, that decline has now eased to only 5% in 2019. That’s aided Samsung in bandaging its wounds somewhat and posting revenue for the quarter just short of $13bn. It’s still a little way off Intel, but its revenue is finally back on the rise and its got big plans to bolster its business elsewhere.

These plans may crank up the heat on Intel and TSMC, as Samsung recently announced it will be spending ungodly quantities of cash on its contract manufacturing business. The company already has a rather sizeable chip making business, but it hopes on competing head-to-head with the likes of TSMC and net itself some larger clients with its $115bn adrenalin shot. Yep, ungodly.

“Despite the fact that the memory chip market remains pressured by falling prices, weak demand and excess inventory, Samsung in the second quarter managed to find some growth opportunities for its memory products,” Ron Ellwanger, senior analyst at IHS Markit, says. “Samsung has started to see some recovery in NAND and DRAM memory due to strong demand for its high-density products from the mobile and storage segments. NAND sales specifically are benefiting from the higher adoption of solid-state drives in datacentres and from the arrival of new smartphones that have expanded memory content.”

And while Intel is finding success in many areas to keep it at the top of the pile, the latest news has AMD’s 2nd gen EPYC processors on a rampage to rid the datacentre of Intel parts. The red team has already announced Google and Twitter will be utilising its chips, and if momentum falls further in its competitors’ favour, Intel could find its place at the top in jeopardy.

When AMD first launched its Ryzen 3000 series processors on July 7, 2019 they were unable to launch Bungie’s most popular title: Destiny 2. The issue was swiftly addressed by both Bungie and AMD on social media, promising a fix in the coming days. That fix would take a little longer, however, as the AGESA update that contained the working code would be pulled due to instability before a wider release.

Rather than wait around too much longer, Robert Hallock, senior technical marketing manager at AMD, has posted a direct link to beta chipset drivers that remedy the issue. These will get a public release very soon, but in the meantime you can download it directly from this Google Drive folder and install it on your machine. You may have to acknowledge a couple of warnings along the way, due to this driver’s beta status, but users are reporting the fix is successful.

“Concerning Destiny 2,” Hallock writes on a Reddit post, “this is indeed something we caught after launch. Plain and simple: I’m sorry. It is not a title that is in our standard test suite, as it’s difficult to reliably benchmark. When we caught it, we sent out a proactive statement to our global press list, about 700 members, resulting in coverage like this. We also collaborated with Bungie support staff to root cause the issue and communicate with their customer support team to let users know what’s up.

“I’m hoping you can help me test a workaround driver that should get you into the game. This is a beta chipset driver, and it may give you an installer warning or two if you’re upgrading an existing driver, but I believe this should work around the D2 launch issue. Can you let me know if it works?”

Earlier in the month, Phoronix noted that issues affecting Destiny 2 may have been one in the same with those causing boot issues on Linux. The issue reportedly lay with the RdRand instruction. This is intended to return random numbers from a random number generator – praise RNGesus – which is crucial to some Linux distros’ boot sequence, and it just so happens Destiny 2 relies on that very instruction, too.

The AGESA fix for the issue, alongside other improvements, will launch under the title 1003ABB in the next few weeks, AMD states. Also now available is a new version of Ryzen Master with monitoring and behaviour improvements.