Suzanne Plummer, a director of design engineering at AMD who heads development of the "Zen"-based processor hinted that it will do what analysts hope – save AMD's bacon.

Zen could be the project that either saves AMD or kills it stone dead so it is not as if there is much pressure for her to succeed. Last week AMD announced that Jim Keller, a legendary processor engineer who headed development of "Zen" micro-architecture, had left the company.

However it is thought that he completed the work on the first two iterations of the "Zen" technology before he went. He also worked on the "K12" architecture, which is compatible with the ARMv8-A instruction set architecture.

Plummer said that it was the first time in a very long time that engineers have been given the total freedom to build a processor from scratch and do the best we can do. We guess that if you are making a last roll of the dice, you might as well bet the farm on it.

"Zen is a multi-year project with a really large team," Plummer said. "It's like a marathon effort with some sprints in the middle. The team is working very hard, but they can see the finish line. I guarantee that it will deliver a huge improvement in performance and (low) power consumption over the previous generation."

She has worked at AMD since 2002, when the company took over Alchemy Semiconductor.

The first processor based on "Zen" micro-architecture is code-named "Summit Ridge". The chip is expected to hit the market in October 2016, and aim at high-end desktops and servers. The new cores will offer at least 40 per cent performance improvement at the same clock-rate compared to existing cores.