AMD's Zen 6 Epyc chip packs 256 cores, promises up to 1.7x faster AI

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First look: AMD will give its first public look at its Epyc Venice processors later this month, showcasing the new Zen 6 architecture at the Advancing AI 2026 summit in San Francisco on July 22. The demonstration will highlight performance for AI workloads, with AMD claiming a major speed increase over its previous Epyc chips. The company says Venice can run at up to 1.7 times the speed of its last-generation Epyc CPUs.

Those speed gains come with a smaller increase in core count, from 192 to 256. The gap between core count and overall speed suggests the gains come from architectural changes as well as more cores.

The chips are built on TSMC's 2-nanometer process, a shift that brings both performance and efficiency improvements. Venice also introduces a new SP7 socket and supports 16-channel memory, delivering up to 1.6 terabytes per second of bandwidth. That level is designed for large, compute-heavy workloads, especially AI-related tasks.