No Ryzen 4000 this year? Report claims that AMD’s 7nm Zen 3 “Vermeer” might be delayed to 2021 due to “lack of competition” from Intel Comet Lake S for Ryzen 3000

A report by Taiwanese outlet Digitimes indicates that AMD might delay its "Vermeer" Ryzen 4000 series of desktop processors to 2021, instead of releasing them this year. This would be a significant change from the expected schedule, which has AMD releasing the new Zen 3 parts later this year to counter Intel's recently-released Comet Lake S lineup. 

According to the Digitimes report, Intel still won't be shipping 10nm parts in volume this year, relying no the 14nm Rocket Lake architecture to carry it through most of 2021. Consequently, AMD doesn't have a competitive imperative to drop Zen 3 this year.

Ryzen 3000 and the Matisse refresh parts like the Ryzen 7 3800XT and the Ryzen 9 3900XT are expected to be sufficient competition for Comet Lake S through 2020. The report indicates that AMD might actually skip the enhanced 7nm process node entirely to deliver a 5nm chip in 2021 that succeeds Zen 2.

If true, this would mean that AMD's biggest new product in 2020 might end up being the RDNA2 Big Navi GPU, set to go head-to-head with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX Ampere lineup. The Digitimes report is in contrast to AMD's own 2020 roadmap, though, so it's best taken with a pinch of salt.