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AMD Ryzen 6000 might arrive in 2022 as the world's first 6nm desktop processor

Leaked roadmap suggests the Zen 3+ APU will feature integrated RDNA 2 graphics

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The AMD Ryzen 6000 series will arrive in 2022 as Team Red's first 6nm desktop APUs, according to a leaked product roadmap. 

Though we’re still awaiting the arrival of the AMD Ryzen 4000 desktop APUs, slides shared with Wccftech suggest that the firm's 6th-generation Ryzen CPUs will blow these incoming processors out of the water when it comes to notable upgrades.

AMD Ryzen 6000 APUs, codenamed “Rembrandt”, will be reportedly be based on a new Zen 3+ architecture, which will deliver a boost in both performance and efficiency compared to Zen 3. It's also expected that the Rembrandt APUs will be built on TSMC's new 6nm node, an optimized version of the N7 node.

It's on the graphics side where things get really interesting, however. The massive leak reveals that AMD's Vega graphics will be replaced by RDNA 2, with Team Red bypassing the RDNA 1 GPU architecture that comes in between. 

The RDNA 2 GPUs should deliver increased performance per watt along with support for ray tracing, which means AMD's 6th-generation APUs could be the first deliver console-rivalling graphics. 

There's some bad news, however, as it looks like AMD will be abandoning its AM4 socket when Rembrandt debuts, moving to the newer AM5 platform. However, this will bring with it a number of features including DDR5, LPDDR5, USB 4.0, and PCIe 5.0.

Though we don't yet have an exact release date, the roadmap suggests AMD will launch its Rembrandt APUs in 2022.

The Ryzen 6000 processors will succeed, unsurprisingly, AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. Codenamed “Cezanne”, these APUs are expected to arrive in 2021 based on the Zen 3 processor architecture and a Vega graphics core. 

Earlier leaks suggested that Cezanne will be paired with RDNA 2 graphics, but Wccftech predicts the APU will instead continue to rely on the older Vega cores, with RDNA 2 support relegated to systems with discrete graphics in 2021.

According to the leaked roadmap, AMD's next desktop APU upgrade, Ryzen 4000, will arrive at some point this month.