Mysterious reported AMD engineering sample could be Picasso desktop APU

AMD's Picasso lineup features Athlon and Ryzen mobile APUs. (Source: Digit)

The codename given to an AMD engineering sample processor has been leaked online and has already sparked considerable speculation as to what it could be. A breakdown of the name seems to point at the chip being a desktop APU from the Picasso range based on the Zen+ microarchitecture. This series currently consists of just mobile processors.

by Daniel R Deakin, 2019/04/03

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The mysteriously titled AMD engineering sample “PD340SC5M4MFH_37/34_Y, AMD Myrtle-PCO” has been leaked online courtesy of Tum Apisak, and it has led to no small amount of conjecture of what processor it is. Reddit investigators have taken to logically breaking down the name to work out what the renowned leaker has actually shared with us.

Straightaway, there is confusion because of the “P” that points to production EPYC, which is of course AMD’s server series. The “D” has been taken for “desktop”, while the “340” part could hint at the APU’s final production name. Redditor RaptaGzus has posted that “S” could be “SKU”, and then “C5” is for 65 W Raven Ridge.

“M” is for AM4 (socket), “4” signifies four cores, and “M” seems to be a cache memory reference (4x 512kB L2 + 4 MB L3). Reddit’s detectives continue with the breakdown: “FH” is believed to be a stepping or revision code, and the "37" and "34" likely point to 3.4 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz boost clock. “Myrtle” also refers to AM4 testing.

Unfortunately, although the codename seems to have been reasonably decoded, it leaves us with a very curious piece of hardware. Is this engineering sample a Picasso Zen+ desktop APU or is it something completely different? It looks like AMD is extremely busy on the processor development front at the very least.