AMD’s 3D V Cache, The new Gaming Era

The year 2021 saw many changes in the Gaming and Chip manufacturing industry, intel regaining its Crown back in Q1 of 2021 which was earlier claimed by AMD’s Zen 3 architecture-based processor Ryzen 9 5900X. But with CES 2022 on the calendars of 2022 everyone awaited for AMD to claim back their title, everyone predicted that Zen 4 would be next in line. But AMD had a different plan, Ryzen 5 5800X 3D, based on the same 7nm Zen 3 architecture with a 3.4GHz of base clock and 4.5Ghz turbo clock speeds, AMD claimed this to be the new gaming champ with pushing about 15% more frame rate at 1080p level gaming, even defeating AMD’s flagship processor Ryzen 9 5900X.?The only difference is the introduction of the new concept of 3D V Cache memory. So, what’s so special about this?

The main game-changer here is the amount of access time required to seek data and the amount of cache stored. This new V cache has two cache locations (The actual Zen 3 core with 64MB of cache and the 32MB of 3D Cache) totaling a whopping 96MB of onboard cache, with the use of more dense Hybrid bond 3D technology making it more thermally and volumetrically feasible.?Along with this new architecture, the Zen 3 core is also thinned down so that stacking of the 3D V cache will only sum up to the total thickness of the usual Zen 3 dye(observe the figure), allowing customers to use the same heat sink and cooler on the top of the processor, AMD here has cleverly modified the architecture vertically rather than altering the sockets or other horizontal aspects.

These two dyes are having perfect molecular level plain surfaces to be bound together, it’s a physical force just like gravitational force between two bodies which allows them to further improve the functionality, which the other technologies like C4 and Micro bump do not(You can relate the difference in the dense connectivity in these three techs by observing dots in this schematic diagram). In fast-paced games and other CPU-demanding software programs, the data access here becomes very fast as the CPU stores all the local cache rather than demanding it from the RAM, AMD claims this to be 8 to 9 times faster than the previous data accessing modules. For the games with thousands of requests per second, this substantial decrease in the access time makes this processor the new gaming champ, however, the on-ground benchmarks of the commercial variants will make all the claims clear and set the stage for other companies to dive deep into the field and tweak these small changes to harness and put forward some faster chips. AMD has successfully tapped the potential of packing technology to build better chips rather than just focusing on the new microtechnology and processing architecture.

This Hybrid bond 3D technology has a wide range of applications which AMD is still working on, to introduce it into GPUs, Memory, and other hardware components, probably working more on the vertical development of the chips and further enhancing the IPC rates as well.

With the AMD’s Zen 4 architecture on its way with 5nm technology, further pushing up the frame rates and challenging intel’s upcoming generations. Combined with AMD’s smart access memory of their new-gen GPUs will also help AMD reach its peak performance. Further intel releasing ARC may prove a game-changer.

So a lot is coming up in the future for PC gamers, this cut-throat competition would always result in the consumer’s benefit by restricting the price benches of these new hardware components.