Tech 25 July 2026

AMD just put 256 cores in a single processor and called it EPYC Venice

AMD's new EPYC Venice arrives with up to 256 cores, the Zen 6 architecture and TSMC's 2-nanometre process. What that means for data centres and for the race with Intel and Nvidia.

Two hundred and fifty-six cores. In one processor. That is the number AMD carried onto the Advancing AI stage in San Francisco, and it is the kind of number that only makes sense once you know where it is going: inside servers that spend all day training and serving artificial intelligence models.

What is EPYC Venice?

It is AMD’s next generation of server processors, built on the Zen 6 architecture and manufactured on TSMC’s 2-nanometre process. The top part reaches 256 cores and 512 threads by stacking up to eight blocks of 32 cores each. It is the company’s first high-performance chip to enter volume production at 2 nanometres, and in semiconductors being first onto a new process node usually buys you two or three years of advantage.

Why do 256 cores matter?

Because in a data centre the thing that counts is not how fast one core runs, it is how much work fits in each rack. More cores per processor means fewer machines, less rented floor space, less cooling and less electricity for the same load, and electricity is now the industry’s largest bill. It is no accident that Google is designing chips tailored to Gemini for exactly the same reason: fewer watts per answer.

AMD also used the event to sketch the road to 2028. After Zen 6 comes Zen 7, codenamed Florence, and a Zen 8 is already in development. At the same show the company demonstrated Helios, a full AI rack pairing these processors with its own Instinct accelerators, the most direct answer AMD has yet given to Nvidia’s closed systems.

Does any of this reach Portugal?

It does, in the least visible way imaginable: inside data centres. Portugal is preparing new industrial zones to host this kind of infrastructure, and these are precisely the machines that will fill them. Full specifications live on AMD’s site for anyone who enjoys reading datasheets over breakfast.

For everyone else, the short version: the chip race stopped being about phones a long time ago. It is about who can pack the most computing into the same warehouse.

By Oliver Grant

Image: Gene Wang / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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