Inside AMD's development of the Zen CPU

AMD knew it needed to make radical changes in its Zen CPU chip to become a force in the PC and server markets again.
So when the chip designers sat down four years ago to etch out the Zen design, they had two things in mind: to drive up CPU performance as much as possible and to keep power efficiency stable.
The company ultimately settled for a 40 percent improvement in Zen over its predecessor, Excavator.
"We had a hard time convincing the team we were going for 40 percent," said Mike Clark, a