Details on the smaller AMD Phoenix2 APU emerge

AMD Phoenix comes in two variants.

AMD has been brewing a new APU for low-power devices. The fact that AMD might launch a smaller processor similar to its Phoenix silicon was not a secret for a long time. An unofficial name of “Little Phoenix” was mentioned as far back as June last year, but AMD did not confirm it until now.

The company recently launched its Ryzen 7040HS and 7040U series based on Zen4 architecture, the latter features four SKUs. According to the AMD website, the two models come with a smaller Phoenix CCD die measuring 137mm², which is about 23% smaller than the Phoenix die in the 7840U/7640U APU. This inadvertently confirms that there are two variants.

Twitter users @xinoassasin and @BusAlexey explain that Ryzen 7540U features two core types: Zen4 and Zen4c, the latter is supposedly a down clocked version of the Zen4. AMD could actually use both Phoenix APUs for this Ryzen SKU, since Zen4c is simply a down clocked version of the Zen4 core.

Phoenix2 top die is 7540U (2 high+4 low), but 7540U is dual sourced: some chips will be full Phoenix2 dies (2+4), some will be cut down Phoenix1 dies (since Zen4c is just a downclocked Zen4, it’s easy to bin it down from 8 high-clock cores to 2 high-clock + 4 low-clock cores)

— Бусыгин Алексей (@BusAlexey) June 29, 2023

Earlier rumors suggested that “Phoenix2” might have up to 8 RDNA3 GPU cores, but as far as official specs for 7540/7440U processors stand, those should offer up to 4 CUs for the integrated Radeon 740M graphics.

AMD Ryzen 7640U and 7440U using different dies, Source: AMD

Aside from listing different die sizes, AMD did not acknowledge that there is a smaller Phoenix die. Furthermore, there are still no laptops on the market with such an APU, so it is not yet possible to confirm.

Source: @xinoassasin , @BusAlexey , AMD