An AMD engineering sample of its next-generation Zen 6 mobile processor has turned up in Geekbench benchmark results, providing concrete evidence that the company is already testing silicon for the architecture. The discovery offers the first hands-on confirmation that Zen 6 consumer chips are moving through development, though the early clock speeds suggest the hardware remains far from final.
The processor, codenamed "Medusa Point", is a 28W ten-core mobile CPU intended for laptops. The leaked sample features 32 megabytes of L3 cache, a new specification that represents a notable increase from the 16 to 24 megabytes found on current-generation mobile processors.
The presence of 10 cores alone was a useful identifier; that configuration does not exist in AMD's current mobile lineup and helped researchers trace the sample back to Medusa Point specifically. The engineering sample identifier "Plum-MDS1" proved critical, with "Plum" linking to AMD's FP10 socket for next-generation mobile parts and "MDS1" matching the Medusa codename.
However, perspective matters here. The engineering sample ran at very low clock speeds, reaching just over 2 gigahertz at peak but averaging around 1.39 gigahertz during testing. 3-nanometre processors will not be limited to such frequencies in their final form, meaning little can be concluded from the actual benchmark performance. The result instead simply proves AMD has working silicon, not that it performs well.
The leak aligns with AMD's public roadmap. AMD has committed to launching Zen 6 architecture this year, though most likely only EPYC server processors will arrive in 2026, with consumer mobile and desktop parts coming later. Given AMD's typical launch schedules, Medusa Point should arrive around CES 2027.
Desktop Zen 6 chips, codenamed "Olympic Ridge", remain even further out. Consumer models are expected to feature up to 12 cores per chiplet with a maximum of 24 cores total for dual-chiplet designs, representing a significant core-count increase over current Ryzen processors. Desktop variants will reportedly offer 50 percent more cores and 50 percent more L3 cache than Zen 5, with 48 megabytes per chiplet before any 3D V-Cache variants.
For now, the leak confirms AMD is not behind schedule on Zen 6 development. That said, benchmark results from engineering samples months before launch carry limited predictive value. The real test of Zen 6's promise will come when AMD officially unveils the architecture and releases final silicon to the market.