New AMD docs show its next-gen Zen 6 CPUs will adopt Intel's 'FRED' interrupt handling and could point to a major architectural overhaul

(Image credit: Future)

Documents detailing technical aspects of what's thought to be its next-gen Zen 6 CPUs have been posted on AMD's website. The most significant covers AMD's adoption of Intel's so-called 'FRED' interrupt handling. It's a change that implies that Zen 6 could be a major architectural overhaul as opposed to a relatively minor revision.

FRED stands for Flexible Return and Event Delivery. At least, that's what it stands for now. No lesser an authority than Linux creator Linus Torvalds has something to say about that, more on which in a moment.

As it happens, Intel's new Panther Lake chip is its first CPU to support FRED. Panther Lake is certainly a very nice mobile CPU. But it doesn't bring really dramatic per-core CPU performance gains, albeit any uplift from FRED may not automatically be present in legacy software. In other words, the benefits of FRED may not be visible benchmarking existing software as opposed to code compiled explicitly to support FRED.

Anywho, getting back to Mr. Torvalds, back in 2021, he opined quite positively on FRED. "The Intel FRED stuff has several years of background, and honestly, I think is the right thing to do. It really relegates the whole IDT to a 'we don't even use this at all, unless you have legacy segment selectors'. Good riddance to a truly horrid thing that goes back to a truly disgusting CPU architecture: the 80286," He said.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor — Could AMD's next-gen Zen 6 CPU architecture be a bigger update than it usually delivers for even numbered Zen generations? (Image credit: Future)

Torvalds then concludes, "I think the Intel version is better if you think that x86-64 should actually survive longer-term, and you actually want to improve exception handling and speed things up (the 'F' historically stood for 'Fast', I'm not sure why they've apparently renamed it 'Flexible')," all of which provides intriguing insight.

Now, arguably, the idea that Zen 6 will be a major architectural step doesn't entirely align with previous generations of Zen CPUs. AMD has thus far tended to restrict major redesigns of Zen to every other architecture. Zen 1, Zen 3 and Zen 5 are the fully or substantially new architectures by that narrative, with Zen 2 and Zen 4 more minor updates. On that schedule, Zen 7 would be the next big redesign.

Still, not only is that characterisation of AMD's Zen architectures open to interpretation, it's no guarantee that AMD hasn't gone for a bigger upgrade than usual for an even-numbered Zen generation. Whatever, we should find out more later this year when AMD is expected to release its next-gen Zen 6-based processors.

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👉Chec...

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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