the kilowatt era of CPUs is emerging as AMD prepares specialized cooling for its next-generation SP7 socket powering EPYC ´Venice´. a Microloops presentation at the OCP APAC 2025 Summit focused on system-level cooling with custom high-performance cold plates and cooling distribution units and disclosed that AMD is likely to target CPUs with thermal design powers between 700 and 1400 watts. this development marks AMD´s first step toward a kilowatt-level chip design and the need for corresponding kilowatt-level cooling solutions.
AMD is preparing to roll out the Zen 6 microarchitecture in 2026 with a server-focused flagship called EPYC ´Venice´. the platform is expected to increase core counts significantly, using full-sized Zen 6 cores and an updated I/O subsystem to boost multithreaded throughput. AMD is reportedly configuring Venice to support as many as 256 CPU cores in a single package, and the company projects roughly a 70 percent improvement in multithreaded performance compared to the current EPYC ´Turin´ family.
under the hood, Zen 6 CCDs are planned for TSMC´s 2 nm N2 node, while the server I/O die will introduce next-generation connectivity with PCIe Gen 6 to increase raw device bandwidth for GPUs, NVMe storage, and high-speed NICs. AMD has cited potential memory bandwidth of up to about 1.6 TB/s, which could be achieved through faster DRAM clocks, expanding the memory controller to a 16-channel DDR5 layout from the current 12 channels, or supporting multichannel DIMM formats such as MR-DIMM and MCR-DIMM. taken together, these changes promise much higher multithreaded throughput but also a significant power cost, prompting AMD and ecosystem partners to plan customized cooling solutions for the new platform.
