AMD Zen 7 is officially revealed as new architecture for future desktop gaming CPUs

AMD Zen 7 leaks have long pointed to this being the name of the architecture that will power AMD's future generations of CPUs. However, today marks the first time AMD has officially confirmed that Zen 7 exists and will follow on from the current Zen 5 range of CPUs and the upcoming Zen 6 range.

AMD first used the Zen architecture name when it launched its original generation of Ryzen CPUs, back in 2017. Since then, the company has developed four more generations of CPU, culminating in the last two - Zen 4 and Zen 5 - the undisputed best gaming CPUs of their generation, thanks in large part to the innovation of its 3D V-Cache technology. As such, it has long been anticipated that Zen 6 and then Zen 7 would be the names of its next two generations of CPU designs, but it's only now that the latter is official.

The moment of unveiling happened at AMD's Financial Analyst Day, where the company also hinted at its "next-gen" Radeon graphics chips and the "next-gen AI & raytracing" that they will incorporate. Back to the CPUs, though, and few details of the new architecture were revealed, but AMD did point to them using a "future node" for manufacturing and including a "new matrix engine" and "AI data format expansion."

So, yes, AI is the biggest feature AMD is mentioning about this new architecture, which is no great surprise given the current state of the industry. Gamers might not care much about it - although who knows what AI might be capable of in the two to four years when these chips launch - but data centers and many other applications will no doubt be using local AI processing ever more in the future.

As for the brand name that CPUs using this architecture are likely to use, it's distinctly unclear. For desktops, the company may want to avoid moving from its current Ryzen 9000 range to a Ryzen 10000 series, as the numbers start to get unwieldy, but were it to make that change for its next generation, we could perhaps see Zen 7 chips fall under a Ryzen 11000 series naming scheme.

Looking less far ahead, we've long known that Zen 6 is the next generation of CPUs to arrive from AMD. These will use the current AM5 platform as supported by its Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 chips, so should make for an easy upgrade for anyone who already owns an AM5 motherboard. AMD didn't reveal too many fresh details about Zen 6 in its presentation, but it did confirm it will arrive in 2026, use an "industry-first 2nm" manufacturing process, and include "more AI pipelines" and "new AI data type support."