Chips are likely Zen 5's last hurrah before Venice makes its debut later this year

AMD's edgiest Epyc chips are officially getting a Zen 5 refresh with the introduction of its 8005-series processors codenamed Sorano.

Announced ahead of Mobile World Congress, the chips replace the House of Zen's aging Siena Epycs, which were launched in the latter half of 2023 and promise higher core counts alongside a slew of micro-architectural improvements, including a full-fat 512-bit data path for vector instructions.

Sorano will be available with up to 84 Zen 5 cores — up from 64 on Siena — in a power envelope of just 225 watts.

AMD isn't ready to spill all the beans on its latest Epyc just yet, but based on core count alone, we surmise the chip will either feature six density-optimized Zen 5c chiplets with 14 of 16 cores enabled or 12 of the frequency-optimized Zen 5 variety with one of the eight cores fused off.

Considering the major efficiency ...