When Apple announced their transition form Intel processors to Apple Silicon, we were left wondering how the silicon will perform and what characteristics will it bring with it. According to the latest report from The China Times, the Apple custom GPU found inside the new Apple Silicon will bring better performance and energy efficiency compared to Intel iGPU it replaces. The 5 nm GPU manufactured on TSMC's N5 semiconductor manufacturing node is supposedly codenamed "Lifuka" and it brings Apple's best to the table. Planned to power a 12-inch MacBook, the GPU will be paired with a custom CPU based on Arm ISA as well. The same chips powering iPhone and iPad devices will go into MacBook devices, with the TDP increased as MacBook will probably have much higher cooling capacity. The first Apple Silicon MacBook will come in H2 of 2021.Here is the copy of a full report from The China Times below:

Just ahead of the September launch, specifications of NVIDIA's upcoming RTX Ampere lineup have been leaked by industry sources over at VideoCardz. According to the website, three alleged GeForce SKUs are being launched in September - RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070. The new lineup features major improvements: 2nd generation ray-tracing cores and 3rd generation tensor cores made for AI and ML. When it comes to connectivity and I/O, the new cards use the PCIe 4.0 interface and have support for the latest display outputs like HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a.

The GeForce RTX 3090 comes with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory running on a 384-bit bus at 19.5 Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth capacity of 936 GB/s. The card features the GA102-300 GPU with 5,248 CUDA cores running at 1695 MHz, and is rated for 350 W TGP (board power). While the Founders Edition cards will use NVIDIA's new 12-pin power connector, non-Founders Edition cards, from board partners like ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, will be powered by two 8-pin connectors. Next up is specs for the GeForce RTX 3080, a GA102-200 based card that has 4,352 CUDA cores running at 1710 MHz, paired with 10 GB of GDDR6X memory running at 19 Gbps. The memory is connected with a 320-bit bus that achieves 760 GB/s bandwidth. The board is rated at 320 W and the card is designed to be powered by dual 8-pin connectors. And finally, there is the GeForce RTX 3070, which is built around the GA104-300 GPU with a yet unknown number of CUDA cores. We only know that it has the older non-X GDDR6 memory that runs at 16 Gbps speed on a 256-bit bus. The GPUs are supposedly manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process, possibly the EUV variant.

TSMC had been working super hard in the past few years and has been investing in lots of new technologies to drive the innovation forward. At TSMC's Technology Symposium held this week was, the company has presented various things like the update on its 12 nm node, as well as future plans for node development. One of the most interesting announcements made this week was TSMC's state and ownership of Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) machines. ASML, the maker of these EUV machines used to etch the pattern on silicon, has been the supplier of the Taiwanese company. TSMC has announced that they own an amazing 50% of all EUV machine installations.

What is more important is the capacity that the company achieves with it. It is reported that TSMC achieves 60% of all EUV wafer capacity in the world, which is a massive achievement of what TSMC can do with the equipment. The company right now has only two nodes on EUV in high-volume manufacturing, the 7 nm+ node and 5 nm node (which is going HVM in Q4), however, that is more than any of its competitors. All of the future nodes are to be manufactured using the EUV machines and the smaller nodes require it. As far as the competitors go, only Samsung is currently making EUV silicon on the 7 nm LPP node. Intel is yet to release some products on a 7 nm node of its own, which is the first EUV node from the company.

SiliconArts today released RC-MC, its next generation RayCore graphics architecture. The RayCore MC is scalable and modular to enable integration on a wide variety of gaming platforms including cloud, desktop, mobile, console and VR/AR. The RC-MC is being made available in an external Graphics Accelerator (eGFX) for content developers and SOC design evaluation.

Jon Peddie, principle and founder of Jon Peddie Research, says of the RayCore MC product release: "SiliconArts' latest product breaks another barrier between the professional rendering and the broader graphics market, with path tracing features such as global illumination and soft shadows that are being deployed in advanced rendering farms today."

Marvell, a leading provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today announced an extension of their long term partnership with TSMC (TWSE: 2330; NYSE:TSMC), the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, to deliver a comprehensive silicon portfolio for the data infrastructure market leveraging the industry's most advanced 5 nanometer (nm) process technology. Next-generation infrastructure has never been more critical to the global economy. It's what's keeping the world connected, businesses running and information flowing. With this collaboration, Marvell and TSMC are advancing the essential technology underpinning this infrastructure to provide the storage, bandwidth, speed, and intelligence that tomorrow's digital economy demands - with the added customer benefit of significant energy efficiency. Built in partnership with TSMC on the most advanced process technology currently in volume production, Marvell's new 5 nm portfolio will enable leading-edge silicon innovation for the infrastructure market.

Marvell's breakthrough 5 nm portfolio will provide the essential high-performance compute, networking and security technology required to advance infrastructure development for a multitude of end-market applications. Marvell's Ethernet connectivity solutions enable high-performance, low-power network connectivity, optimized for applications that span cloud data centers to the harsh environment of the automotive market. Marvell's OCTEON platform is the industry's leading Arm-based high-performance compute architecture for embedded infrastructure applications targeting a wide variety of wired and wireless networking equipment including switches, routers, secure gateways, firewalls, and network monitoring solutions. OCTEON is the world's most widely deployed data processing unit (DPU) for data-center scale computing and enables a multitude of acceleration and offload capabilities, including Smart NICs and security accelerators. Featuring optimized and customized 5G processing and baseband capabilities, Marvell's OCTEON Fusion platform is pushing the boundaries of wireless network infrastructure.

TSMC on Monday kicked off a virtual tech symposium, where it announced its new 12 nm N12e node for IoT edge devices, announced the new 3DFabric Technology, and detailed progress on its upcoming 5 nm N5 and 3 nm N3 silicon fabrication nodes. The company maintains that the N5 (5 nm) node offers the benefits of a full node uplift over its current-gen N7 (7 nm), which recently clocked over 1 billion chips shipped. The N5 node incorporates EUV lithography more extensively than N6/N7+, and in comparison to N7 offers 30% better power at the same performance, 15% more performance at the same power, and an 80% increase in logic density. The company has commenced high-volume manufacturing on this node.

2021 will see the introduction and ramp-up of the N5P node, an enhancement of the 5 nm N5 node, offering a 10% improvement in power at the same performance, or 5% increase in performance at the same power. A nodelet of the N5 family of nodes, called N4, could see risk production in Q4 2021. The N4 node is advertised as "4 nm," although the company didn't get into its iso-power/iso-performance specifics over the N5 node. The next major node for TSMC will be the 3 nm N3 node, with massive 25%-30% improvement in power at the same performance, or 10%-15% improvement in performance at same power, compared to N5. It also offers a 70% logic density gain over N5. 3DFabric technology is a new umbrella term for TSMC's CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate), CoW (chip on wafer), and WoW (wafer on wafer) 3-D packaging innovations, with which it plans to offer packaging innovations that compete with Intel's various new 3D chip packaging technologies on the anvil.

TSMC on Monday announced the N12e silicon fabrication node. An enhancement of its 12 nm FinFET node, N12e is designed for value 5G application processors, MODEMs, and IoT edge devices, such as true-wireless earbuds, smartwatch processors, wearables, VR HMDs, entry-level and mainstream SoCs, etc. The node has been derived from the company's 12FFC+_ULL node, and fits into the 12-16 nm class of nodes. It's intended to succeed the company's 22ULL node (in terms of pricing), offering a 76% increase in logic density, 49% increase in clock speed at a given power, 55% improvement in power draw at a given speed, 50% reduction in SRAM leakage current, and low Vdd, with support for logic voltages as low as 0.4 V. That last bit in particular should make the node suitable for tiny, battery-powered devices such as wearables.

In a bid to show off its volume production prowess and technological edge (but mostly to rub it in to rival fabs), TSMC on Thursday announced that it shipped its 1 billionth chip fabricated on its 7 nm process. If these dies were combined into one big rectangular wafer, they would cover 13 New York City blocks. TSMC's 7 nm process debuted with its N7 node, which went into volume production in April 2018, over two years ago. The fab has since mass-produced 7 nm chips for the likes of Qualcomm, Apple, and AMD, among dozens of other clients. The company now looks to monetize refinements of N7, namely the N7e and N7P (DUV refinements), while executing its crucial EUV-based N7+ node, leading up to future nodelets such as N6. Much of TSMC's growth will be propelled by 5G modems, application processors, and its pivotal role in the growth of companies such as AMD.

Microsoft in its Hot Chips 32 presentation detailed the SoC at the heart of the upcoming Xbox Series X entertainment system. The chip mostly uses AMD IP blocks, and is built on TSMC N7e (enhanced 7 nm) process. It is a 360.4 mm² die with a transistor count of 15.3 billion. Microsoft spoke about the nuts and bolts of the SoC, including its largest component - the GPU based on AMD's new RDNA2 graphics architecture. The GPU takes up much of the chip's die area, and has a raw SIMD throughput of 12 TFLOP/s. It meets DirectX 12 Ultimate logo requirements, supporting hardware-accelerated ray-tracing.

The RDNA2 GPU powering the Xbox Series X SoC features 52 compute units spread across 26 RDNA2 dual compute units. The silicon itself physically features two additional dual CUs (taking the total physical CU count to 56), but are disabled (possibly harvesting headroom). We've detailed first-generation RDNA architecture in the "architecture" pages of our first AMD Radeon RX 5000-series "Navi" graphics card reviews, which explains much of the SIMD-level innovations from AMD that help it drive a massive SIMD IPC gain over the previous-generation GCN architecture. This hierarchy is largely carried over to RDNA2, but with the addition of a few SIMD-level components.

A Nikkei investigative report uncovered that two Chinese semiconductor fabrication firms, namely Quanxin Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (QXIC), and Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (HSMC), have poached over 100 veteran semiconductor engineers from TSMC since last year. Both firms are recipients of government funding under China's ambitious plan of complete electronics hardware industry independence by 2025. Both firms were floated as recently as 2017, and began hiring specialist engineers and executives with connections across the semiconductor industry, from TSMC. The two began development of a 14 nm-class FinFET node that would support manufacturing of a wide variety of electronics components, including SoCs, ASICs, transceivers, and storage products.

Nikkei estimates that in a span of a year, Taiwan lost more than 3,000 semiconductor engineers to various start-ups in the mainland, including large semiconductor fabs. Sources in TSMC tell the Japanese publication that the company is "very concerned" about the flight of talent toward China, although it didn't believe that there is any immediate danger to the company's output or technological edge. The source advocated a national-level strategy by various Asian governments to retain talent, not through coercion, but by offering better incentives and pay than the Chinese firms flush with public investment.

In the ave of the news that Trump administration has forbidden TSMC to have Huawei as its customer, Huawei seems to be exploring new options for sourcing the best performing mobile processors. As the company has turned to the Chinese SMIC semiconductor factory, it still needs a backup plan in the case of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing flops. So to combat US sanctions, Huawei will use already made chips form the US company - Qualcomm. By sourcing the processors from Qualcomm, Huawei is losing some benefits of customs design like better system integration, however, it will gain quite powerful mobile processors. As Qualcomm is known for providing the fastest processors for Android smartphones, Huawei has ensured that it remains competitive. Qualcomm is reportedly now negotiating with the US government about delivering the chips to Huawei, and if it is allowed, Qualcomm will gain a big customer.

Softbank-owned company Arm Ltd. has been a subject to a round of rumors regarding the potential buyout of the company because Softbank has considered selling it for some time. The company has approached NVIDIA, with their talks getting "advanced", and Samsung wants a piece of the cake as well. It is now reported that Softbank has approached TSMC and Foxconn as well, regarding a potential Arm takeover. In the report by Nikkei Asia, we have found out that Arm has shared the same financial data points and business plan with TSMC and Foxconn, the same way company did with NVIDIA.

If TSMC and Foxconn have any interest in the company, it would be necessary to create a consortium that would operate Arm Ltd. With NVIDIA, Samsung, and these two new players, the consortium would already count four companies. Nikkei sources claim that Apple and Qualcomm have been also included in the poll of potential buyers, which would make the idea of establishing a consortium very valid.

XMG, a well-known gaming brand for high performance laptops and PCs that operates under Schenker Technologies has announced via a Reddit post that it is facing serious constraints in AMD Ryzen 7 4800H supply. This has meant a delay for parts that were expected to be fulfilled in August, which now have an expected delivery date by late September. The company is offering a number of alternatives for users that may want to change their order in wake of the delay, including a chip downgrade (for AMD's Ryzen 4600H), a CPU manufacturer swap (to Intel's Core i7-10750H), a battery downgrade from 62Wh to 46Wh (with laptops being likely manufactured by two different ODMs in this case), or a full refund.

The company says that this has been caused, in part, by an upsurge in demand for AMD Ryzen 4800H CPUs, not only form customers, but also from some leading brands with a much more sizeable portion of the ODM market, who have apparently caught wind of the technological prowess of AMD's most recent 4000 series CPUs compared to Intel's. It can be also speculated that this supply constraint is being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still straining logistics and shipments across the globe, but also by insufficient supply to meet demand. This can be explained by the fact that most tech companies are fabless, and most semiconductor designers have to fight for TSMC's allocation for 7 nm silicon production - and there are only so many wafers that can be allocated to each company at the outset. Perhaps AMD's allocation is also favoring other renditions of their Zen silicon (ie, custom designs for the next-generation consoles and other higher-margin products).

AMD late Tuesday released its Q2-2020 financial results, which saw the company rake in revenue of $1.93 billion for the quarter, and clock a 26 percent YoY revenue growth. In both its corporate presentation targeted at the financial analysts, and its post-results conference call, AMD revealed a handful interesting bits looking into the near future. Much of the focus of AMD's presentation was in reassuring investors that [unlike Intel] it is promising a stable and predictable roadmap, that nothing has changed on its roadmap, and that it intends to execute everything on time. "Over the past couple of quarters what we've seen is that they see our performance/capability. You can count on us for a consistent roadmap. Milan point important for us, will ensure it ships later this year. Already started engaging people on Zen4/5nm. We feel customers are very open. We feel well positioned," said president and CEO Dr Lisa Su.

For starters, there was yet another confirmation from the CEO that the company will launch the "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture across both the consumer and data-center segments before year-end, which means both Ryzen and EPYC "Milan" products based on "Zen 3." Also confirmed was the introduction of the RDNA2 graphics architecture across consumer graphics segments, and the debut of the CDNA scalar compute architecture. The company started shipping semi-custom SoCs to both Microsoft and Sony, so they could manufacture their next-generation Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 game consoles in volumes for the Holiday shopping season. Semi-custom shipments could contribute big to the company's Q3-2020 earnings. CDNA won't play a big role in 2020 for AMD, but there will be more opportunities for the datacenter GPU lineup in 2021, according to the company. CDNA2 debuts next year.

TSMC has been the backbone of silicon designers for a long time. Whenever you question where you can use the latest technology and get some good supply capacity, TSMC got everyone covered. That case seems to be similar to Intel and its struggles. When Intel announced that its 7 nm semiconductor node is going to be delayed a full year, the company's customers and contractors surely became worried about the future releases of products and their delivery, like the case is with Aurora exascale supercomputer made for Argonne National Laboratory, which relies on Intel's 7 nm Ponte Vecchio graphics cards for most of the computation power.

To manage to deliver this, Intel is reportedly in talks with TSMC to prepare capacity for the GPUs and deliver them on time. However, according to industry sources of DigiTimes, TSMC is unlikely to build additional capacity for Intel, besides what it can deliver now. According to those sources, TSMC does not see Intel as a long-term customer and it is unknown what treatment will Intel get from TSMC. Surely, Intel will be able to make a deal with TSMC and secure enough of the present capacity for delivering next-generation processors.

With its own 7 nm-class silicon fabrication node nowhere in sight for its processors, at least not until 2022-23, Intel is seeking out third-party semiconductor foundries to support its ambitious discrete GPU and scalar compute processor lineup under the Xe brand. A Taiwanese newspaper article interpreted by Chiakokhua provides a fascinating insight to the the new precious resource in the high-technology industry - allocation.

TSMC is one of these foundries, and will give Intel access to a refined 7 nm-class node, either the N7P or N7+, for some of its Xe scalar compute processors. The company could also seek out nodelets such as the N6. Trouble is, Intel will be locking horns with the likes of AMD for precious foundry allocation. NVIDIA too has secured a certain allocation of TSMC 7 nm for some of its upcoming "Ampere" GPUs. Sources tell China Times that TSMC will commence mass-production of Intel silicon as early as 2021, on either N7P, N7+, or N6. Business from Intel is timely for TSMC as it is losing orders from HiSilicon (Huawei) in wake of the prevailing geopolitical climate.

Intel is expected to reveal technical details of its upcoming Xe graphics architecture on August 13, according to a tweet by Intel Graphics that has since been deleted. Tom's Hardware believes the reveal is still on the cards. "You've waited. You've wondered. We'll deliver. In 20 days, expect more details on Xe graphics," the tweet read. Senior Fellow and Director of Graphics Architecture at Intel, David Blythe is expected to present a technical brief on the Xe graphics architecture at a Hot Chips 2020 virtual event on August 17.

These technical reveals are closely timed with the launch of "Tiger Lake," Intel's first commercial debut of Xe as an iGPU solution the chipmaker refers to as "Gen12" for consistency with older generations of integrated graphics. Xe is far from designed for just iGPU or small dGPUs, with the architecture being scalable all the way up to large scalar compute processors the size of beer mug coasters. Even as an iGPU, Xe is formidable, as it was recently shown playing AAA games by itself. Recent commentary from Intel at its Q2 2020 financial results provided strong hints of Xe dGPUs being de-coupled from Intel's foundry woes, and possibly headed for third-party foundries such as Samsung or TSMC.

Intel's silicon fabrication woes refuse to torment the company's product roadmaps, with the company disclosing in its Q2-2020 financial results release that the company's first CPUs built on the 7 nanometer silicon fabrication node are delayed by a year due to a further 6-month delay from prior expectations. The company will focus on getting its 10 nm node up to scale in the meantime.

The company mentioned that the 10 nm "Tiger Lake" mobile processor and "Ice Lake-SP" enterprise processor remains on-track for 2020. The company's 12th Generation Core "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors won't arrive before the second half of 2021. In the meantime, Intel will launch its 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" processor on the 14 nm node, but with increased IPC from the new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores. Also in 2H-2021, the company will launch its "Sapphire Rapids" enterprise processors that come with next-gen connectivity and updated CPU cores.

Today we are in for an interesting rumor. According to industry sources of Coreteks, Samsung is rumored to be preparing investment in GlobalFoundries manufacturing facilities. In the latest ave of Asian foundries getting away from China and getting close to EU and US soils, Samsung is the latest one to join the list. First, let's explain the situation. The Trump administration has been pushing TSMC to drop all orders from Huawei, and TSMC did it. That way, Huawei Technologies has lost a major chip supplier which enabled the company a competitive edge. Now, the company must turn to Chinese manufacturers and it can't use any US-made product.

Given that GlobalFoundries is a company headquartered in the US (Santa Clara, California), the company is an American corporation, which has fabs in the US, as well as in Europe. It is truly a global foundry system. Samsung, a Korean semiconductor manufacturer, has been rumored to invest in GlobalFoundries Dresden fab, located in Germany. The company will help GlobalFoundries expand its power supply capacity from 63 MegaWatts to 100 MegaWatts. The proposed expansion of GlobalFoundries Dresden fab would be funded exclusively by Samsung. So why is Samsung doing this? The answer to this question is pretty simple - to get closer to western markets. Even if GlobalFoundries has foundries all over the world, it is a US company at its core. So Samsung hopes that from this investment, it can get closer to US soil and gain some new customers in the future. After all, Samsung plans to become the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer by 2030, the position currently held by its rival TSMC. Below you can check out the expansion plan illustrated by Coreteks:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, called TSMC shorty, has just become the world's biggest semiconductor company. The news broke after TSMC's stock reached a peak heights of $66.40 price per share, and market capitalization of 313 billion US dollars. That means that the Taiwanese company officially passed Intel, NVIDIA, and Samsung in terms of market capitalization, which is no small feat. And the news isn't that surprising. TSMC has been rather busy with orders from customers, just waiting for new spots so they can grab a piece of its production pipeline.

TrendForce, a market intelligence provider, estimates that TSMC has an amazing 51.9% of global semiconductor foundry share alone. That is no small feat but TSMC worked hard over the years to make it happen. With constant investments into R&D, TSMC has managed to make itself not only competitive with other foundries, but rather an industry leader. With 5 nm already going in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in Q4 of this year, the company is demonstrating that it is the market leader with the latest node developments. Smaller nodes like 3 nm are already in development and TSMC doesn't plan to stop.

TSMC, one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing foundries, has officially confirmed that it will stop all orders from Chinese company Huawei Technologies. The Taiwanese silicon manufacturer has decided to comply with US regulations and will officially stop processing orders for Huawei on September 14th of this year. Precisely, the company was receiving orders from HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei Technologies that focuses on creating custom silicon. Under the new regulation by the US, all non-US companies must apply for a license to ship any American-made technology to Huawei. Being that many American companies like KLA Corporation, Lam Research, and Applied Materials ship their tools to many manufacturing facilities, it would be quite difficult for Huawei to manufacture its silicon anywhere. That is why Huawei has already placed orders over at Chinese SMIC foundry.

Apple has recently announced its transition from Intel-based Mac computers to custom Arm-based Apple silicon equipped Macs. The speculations for such transition have lasted a few years and we finally got that confirmation. So the question remains: who will manufacture Apple's custom processors for Arm-based Macs? The answer is pretty simple. It is TSMC who will again become Apple's main supplier of silicon. With its broad offerings of the latest silicon nodes, it was no brainer choice for Apple. Combined with the history of collaboration with Apple, TSMC was the only choice for new Apple silicon. Whatever the company will use the new 5 nm node or use the "old" 7 nm one, the question remains.

TSMC expects to see huge orders from Apple in the second half of 2021, for Apple silicon, so Apple will become perhaps the biggest customer of TSMC. It is also worth pointing out that Apple will be using ASMedia's USB controller for Arm-based Macs, as the original report suggests.

Zhaoxin, the Chinese chip-maker famous for Kaixian line of x86 processors, and a major beneficiary of the Chinese government's ambitious "3-5-2 plan" of public investment toward the country's computer hardware independence by the mid-2020s, unveiled plans to design its first discrete GPUs that could double up as scalar-compute and AI processors. The company's baby step is a tiny 70-Watt dGPU that will be fabricated on TSMC's 28 nm silicon fabrication process that will likely serve as a tech demonstrator and development platform for ISVs. The dGPU is largely expected to derive from VIA's S3 Graphics IP as VIA has collaborated with Zhaoxin as an iGPU provider for its Kaixian line of x86 SoCs.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce "Ampere" family of GPUs will be built almost entirely on Samsung's 8 nanometer silicon fabrication process that's derived from its 10 nm node; rather than TSMC's 7 nm process, according to kopite7kimi, a source with a high hit-rate with NVIDIA rumors in the past. The 8LPP silicon fabrication node by Samsung is an extension of the company's 10LPP (10 nm) node. Both have the same fin pitch, but reductions are made in the areas of gate pitch (down by 6%) resulting in a transistor density of over 61 million/mm². Apparently NVIDIA's entire high-end product stack, including the GA102 silicon that powers at least three high-end consumer SKUs, are expected to be based on Samsung 8LPP.

AMD has been working hard to prepare its next-generation Ryzen 4000 CPUs codenamed Vermeer, and we have some exciting news about it. Thanks to the sources over at Igor's Lab, we have information that AMD Vermeer CPUs are close to launching. Apparently, the CPUs have are now at B0 stepping and are going through the usual validation process. The B0 stepping is where the CPU is fully working and now it just needs to go on mass production. The next step for the CPU is high-volume manufacturing and in a very quick time, the CPUs will be ready to hit the market.

Usually, it takes 3-4 months for silicon to be manufactured, so if AMD has orders set at TSMC's factory for the manufacturing of its processors, we could get the processors very soon. Given that AMD is ready with the design, and there is a lack of competition from team blue, AMD is very flexible with timing. The processors can be ready whenever AMD needs them to be. After a while, AMD is in a position to dictate the market needs and tailor them to their own. This used to be a position where Intel was before the Ryzen era. Now if AMD needs to do a launch as quickly as possible they can. If not, they have the design ready and can push it a few months.