Sunday, May 5th 2019
AMD's Zen 2 Threadripper Conspicuously Absent From Company's Latest Roadmaps
We've all taken a look at AMD's March 2019 product roadmap, which showed us the upcoming 2019 tech the company would be bringing to the table in its "non-stop product momentum". However, it seems that this non-stop product momentum might be coming to an unexpected twist of fate that might delay it from entering the last station - the Zen 2-based Threadripper. In the company's latest May earnings call roadmap, the company silently removed the Zen 2 Threadripper from its product roadmap - where it used to sit right after the launch of Zen 2-based Ryzen products for consumers, is now just a big crop of the space it occupied.
This might mean many things, and a mistake on someone's part while cropping the PowerPoint slide could be the only thing going on here. However, the best and most plausible speculation that can be entertained when one considers this is simple - a supply problem. With the 7 nm node being the newest, most dense fabrication process possible, and with AMD having to share TSMC's 7 nm wafer production with a number of high profile companies - such as Qualcomm, for instance - may mean that supply is simply too tight to support Zen 2-based products across so many product stacks - Ryzen and Epyc - at the same time.Perhaps AMD has delayed manufacturing of Threadripper Zen 2 products until after the initial bout of sales from their upcoming Ryzen 3000 series CPUs fades away, while also allowing for yields to mature and production wrinkles to be ironed out. It would definitely make sense, as Threadripper is definitely the product to cut in such a case - it doesn't carry as much of an impact on AMD's financials and outlook as a deficient Epyc production would bring, and doesn't get in the way of Ryzen 3000 series production to keep on AMD's momentum against Intel's offerings. This definitely does seem like a smart path for AMD to undertake, though it really is a shame that we seemingly won't be looking at a halo product such as the latest gen Threadripper as soon as we thought we might.
This might mean many things, and a mistake on someone's part while cropping the PowerPoint slide could be the only thing going on here. However, the best and most plausible speculation that can be entertained when one considers this is simple - a supply problem. With the 7 nm node being the newest, most dense fabrication process possible, and with AMD having to share TSMC's 7 nm wafer production with a number of high profile companies - such as Qualcomm, for instance - may mean that supply is simply too tight to support Zen 2-based products across so many product stacks - Ryzen and Epyc - at the same time.Perhaps AMD has delayed manufacturing of Threadripper Zen 2 products until after the initial bout of sales from their upcoming Ryzen 3000 series CPUs fades away, while also allowing for yields to mature and production wrinkles to be ironed out. It would definitely make sense, as Threadripper is definitely the product to cut in such a case - it doesn't carry as much of an impact on AMD's financials and outlook as a deficient Epyc production would bring, and doesn't get in the way of Ryzen 3000 series production to keep on AMD's momentum against Intel's offerings. This definitely does seem like a smart path for AMD to undertake, though it really is a shame that we seemingly won't be looking at a halo product such as the latest gen Threadripper as soon as we thought we might.
63 Comments on AMD's Zen 2 Threadripper Conspicuously Absent From Company's Latest Roadmaps
TR is something they should make from surplus EPYC dies, but I doubt there are many. The 7nm supply may not be enough to make all the EPYCs they'd like to sell.
Also, why not unify under the EPYC brand?
If AMD makes workstation EPYCs on Zen2 (which is probable), they'd be selling 2 almost identical product lines: one with enterprise certification and one with a silly box.
Or does it hurt your feelings?
There are plenty of people who dislike the AMD 50th products as well.
It's a beast with 8 chiplets:
TR always be few months behind the main release.
Same as no one is surprised about 3200G being a 12nm Zen+ product instead of 7nm.
... on MS-DOS.