This also means that core-to-core access is much quicker as well, and will mean there are situations where this change alone can offer significant performance improvements. Now all eight cores can access 32MB of 元 cache directly, and don't need to go through the I/O die to do so. In Zen 3, AMD has moved to an eight-core design instead. Which is much slower than accessing that local 元 cache. If a core from one cluster wants to access the 元 cache from another cluster it has to communicate with that cluster through the I/O die using the Infinity Fabric. Zen 2 has up to four cores per core complex (CCX), so that each four-core cluster has access to 16MB of 元 cache. The most fundamental change Zen 3 does offer over Zen 2 is in how the cores are configured. So no, Zen 3 doesn't use TSMC's further-improved 7nm+ production process. This isn't that much different from the production process used for the initial Zen 2 chips, other than optimizations that have been made by AMD and TSMC to get the most from the process. These new AMD Ryzen 5000 processors are still using TSMC's 7nm node. These improvements to the Zen microarchitecture haven't been derived from a new process node either-the Ryzen 5000 chips use the exact same production process as the XT chips that were released this summer, the 3900XT, 3800XT and 3600XT. AMD is claiming a 19 percent IPC improvement over Zen 2, which isn't the sort of boost that comes easily-you need only look at Intel's modest improvements over its last few generations for proof of this. When you factor in the performance improvements it offers that does actually make more sense. On paper AMD's Zen 3 architecture looks like a fairly straightforward evolution of Zen 2, but AMD is keen to point out that something a little more radical has taken place, that Zen 3 is actually a complete ground-up redesign.