AMD TSMC's Second Largest Customer for 5nm, More Resilient Than Intel to Face Downturns in the PC Industry: Report

[btarunr]

AMD is now TSMC's second largest customer for its 5 nanometer N5 silicon fabrication node, according to a DigiTimes report. The Taiwan-based semiconductor industry observer also reports that AMD is more resilient than Intel in facing any downturns in the PC industry, in the coming few months. PC sales are expected to slump by as much as 15 percent in the near future, but the lower market-share compared to Intel; and the flexibility for AMD to move its CPU chips over to enterprise product to feed the growth in server processor segment, means that the company can ride over a bumpy road in the near future. The lower market-share translates to "lesser pain" from a slump compared to Intel. The report also says that embracing TSMC for processors "just in time" means that AMD has a front-row seat with product performance, time-to-market, yields, and delivery.

AMD is on the anvil of two major product launches on 5 nm, the Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael" desktop processors on August 30 (according to the report), and EPYC "Genoa" server processors in November 2022. The company is planning to refresh its notebook processor lineup in the first half of 2023, with "Dragon Range," and "Phoenix Point" targeting distinct market segments among notebooks. "Dragon Range" is essentially "Raphael" (5 nm chiplet + 6 nm cIOD) on a mobile-optimized BGA package, letting AMD cram up to 16 "Zen 4" cores, and take on Intel's high core-count mobile processors. The iGPU of "Dragon Range" will be basic, since designs based on this chip are expected to use discrete GPUs. "Phoenix Point" is a purpose-built mobile processor with up to 8 "Zen 4" cores, and a powerful iGPU based the RDNA3 architecture.



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[tabascosauz]

"Dragon Range" is essentially "Raphael" (5 nm chiplet + 6 nm cIOD) on a mobile-optimized BGA package, letting AMD cram up to 16 "Zen 4" cores, and take on Intel's high core-count mobile processors. The iGPU of "Dragon Range" will be basic, since designs based on this chip are expected to use discrete GPUs.

Chiplet on mobile should be good news for AM5. Dual chiplet AM4 currently loses way too much wattage to SOC (15-20W) and minor rails (10W+); no doubt bringing it to mobile, even for higher TDP parts, should mean better uncore power optimizations carrying over to AM5 if the silicon is the same. Even if the silicon itself is still acceptably efficient, actual package power is just killing 2CCD efficiency. Monolithic AM4 (Cezanne) has comparatively excellent uncore efficiency.

 

[Mussels]

"AMD sells less products so they have less to lose if sales slump"


Sure. I have even less to lose, since I may sell a single CPU this year.

Chiplet on mobile should be good news for AM5. Dual chiplet AM4 currently loses way too much wattage to SOC (15-20W) and minor rails (10W+); no doubt bringing it to mobile, even for higher TDP parts, should mean better uncore power optimizations carrying over to AM5 if the silicon is the same. Even if the silicon itself is still acceptably efficient, actual package power is just killing 2CCD efficiency. Monolithic AM4 (Cezanne) has comparatively excellent uncore efficiency.

Good information there, didn't expect that info dump