The era of CPUs with kilowatt power consumption is here, with AMD preparing specialized cooling for its upcoming SP7 socket that will power EPYC "Venice". At the OCP APAC 2025 Summit in early August, Microloops presented a session focused on system-level cooling using custom high-performance cold plates, cooling distribution units, and more. An interesting detail mentioned was AMD's plan to cool CPUs with TDPs ranging from 700 to 1400 W, marking their first foray into kilowatt-level chip design. This will require kilowatt-level cooling solutions.
AMD is getting ready to introduce its Zen 6 microarchitecture in 2026, with a server-focused flagship named EPYC "Venice". This new platform is expected to increase core counts significantly, utilizing full-sized Zen 6 cores and an updated I/O subsystem to enhance multithreaded throughput. Venice is said to support up to 256 CPU cores in a single package, aiming to strengthen AMD's position in dense compute environments.
Under the hood, Zen 6 CCDs will be based on TSMC's 2 nm N2 node, while the server I/O die will offer next-generation connectivity with PCIe Gen 6, doubling raw device bandwidth for GPUs, NVMe storage, and high-speed NICs. AMD also claims memory bandwidth of up to approximately 1.6 TB/s, achieved through faster DRAM clocks, expanding the memory controller to a 16-channel DDR5 layout, or supporting multichannel DIMM formats like MR-DIMM and MCR-DIMM. Overall, AMD expects Venice to deliver around a 70% improvement in multithreaded performance compared to the current EPYC "Turin" family. However, all these advancements come with a significant power requirement, as AMD prepares to cool these chips with customized solutions.
