It is the successor of AMD's Zen and Zen+ microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the 7 nm MOSFET node from TSMC.

[8] At CES 2019, AMD showed a Ryzen third-generation engineering sample that contained one chiplet with eight cores and 16 threads.

[14] Zen 2-based EPYC server CPUs use a design in which multiple CPU dies (up to eight in total) manufactured on a 7 nm process ("chiplets") are combined with a 14nm I/O die (as opposed to the 12nm IOD on Matisse variants) on each multi-chip module (MCM) package.

In addition, the central I/O die can service multiple chiplets, making it easier to construct processors with a large number of cores.

[27] AMD's Zen 2 architecture can deliver higher performance at a lower power consumption than Intel's Cascade Lake architecture, with an example being the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X running with a TDP of 140 W in ECO mode delivering higher performance than the Intel Core i9-10980XE running with a TDP of 165 W.[28] APU features table On 26 May 2019, AMD announced six Zen 2-based desktop Ryzen processors (codenamed "Matisse").

AMD's second generation of Epyc processors, codenamed "Rome", feature up to 64 cores, and were launched on 7 August 2019.

These are reportedly cut-down variants of the APUs found on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S repurposed from defective chip stock.

[40][41][42] Initially only provided to OEM; later, AMD released retail Zen 2 desktop APUs in April 2022.