A photo has recently come out that is said to show a sneak peek of AMD's next big thing in processors - the Ryzen 9000 series, nicknamed "Granite Ridge." This new lineup is the next step after the current Ryzen 7000 series, known as "Raphael," which runs on the Zen 4 design. The early buzz is that the most powerful versions in the "Granite Ridge" series will keep the same 16-core setup as before. These upcoming processors are designed to fit right into the existing AMD Socket AM5, so if you already have a motherboard from the AMD 600-series chipset, you're in luck; they should work together just fine.

AMD is also said to be cooking up a brand-new motherboard chipset to go along with these new processors, offering even more options for users. The processor in the spotlight, through the leaked image, is tagged with the product code 100-000001290-11. It continues with the Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) design, a carryover from the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" series. Since it's an early version, it doesn't have an official name yet, but there's talk that it could hit the shelves as Ryzen 7 9800X or Ryzen 7 9700X.

The buzz around the tech community, sparked by this leaked image and its unique OPN code (which also popped up in a shipping document and on the Einstein@Home computing platform), suggests this particular processor might have 8 cores and 16 threads. However, the entire "Granite Ridge" series is expected to offer a range from this up to beefier 16 core, 32 thread setups.

AMD hasn't set a date in stone for when the "Granite Ridge" series will make its grand entrance, but there's a lot of expectation swirling around. Many think the first glimpse of the Zen 5 architecture-based products will be sometime this year, possibly with a big reveal at Computex in early June, which would follow the pattern set by the introduction of the Ryzen 7000 series back in 2022.

The Zen 5 microarchitecture, which is the foundation of the Ryzen 9000 series, is predicted to bring a notable improvement in efficiency and performance over the current Zen 4, especially with tasks that demand heavy lifting from the processor, thanks to advancements in the Floating Point Unit (FPU). All eyes are on Computex 2024, where the Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" processors are expected to make their official debut, showcasing what the future of computing holds with AMD.

Sources: VallahExperte (Twitter), HXL (Twitter)