Tuesday, April 15th 2025

AMD Achieves First TSMC N2 Product Silicon Milestone
AMD today announced its next-generation AMD EPYC processor, codenamed "Venice," is the first HPC product in the industry to be taped out and brought up on the TSMC advanced 2 nm (N2) process technology. This highlights the strength of AMD and TSMC semiconductor manufacturing partnership to co-optimize new design architectures with leading-edge process technology. It also marks a major step forward in the execution of the AMD data center CPU roadmap, with "Venice" on track to launch next year. AMD also announced the successful bring up and validation of its 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPU products at TSMC's new fabrication facility in Arizona, underscoring its commitment to U.S. manufacturing.
"TSMC has been a key partner for many years and our deep collaboration with their R&D and manufacturing teams has enabled AMD to consistently deliver leadership products that push the limits of high-performance computing," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "Being a lead HPC customer for TSMC's N2 process and for TSMC Arizona Fab 21 are great examples of how we are working closely together to drive innovation and deliver the advanced technologies that will power the future of computing.""We are proud to have AMD be a lead HPC customer for our advanced 2 nm (N2) process technology and TSMC Arizona fab," said TSMC Chairman and CEO Dr. C.C. Wei. "By working together, we are driving significant technology scaling resulting in better performance, power efficiency and yields for high-performance silicon. We look forward to continuing to work closely with AMD to enable the next era of computing."
"TSMC has been a key partner for many years and our deep collaboration with their R&D and manufacturing teams has enabled AMD to consistently deliver leadership products that push the limits of high-performance computing," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "Being a lead HPC customer for TSMC's N2 process and for TSMC Arizona Fab 21 are great examples of how we are working closely together to drive innovation and deliver the advanced technologies that will power the future of computing.""We are proud to have AMD be a lead HPC customer for our advanced 2 nm (N2) process technology and TSMC Arizona fab," said TSMC Chairman and CEO Dr. C.C. Wei. "By working together, we are driving significant technology scaling resulting in better performance, power efficiency and yields for high-performance silicon. We look forward to continuing to work closely with AMD to enable the next era of computing."
22 Comments on AMD Achieves First TSMC N2 Product Silicon Milestone
On server it makes much more sense regardless as the margins are huge and clients want as many cores as possible on a socket. Moving from 12->16 core CCDs makes sense, even if at a premium.
If they use 2nm/2026 all-around, and A16/2028, I surely hope TSMC get their next node in production fairly quickly (if not the outside chance of Samsung's '1nm') bc they'll need something new come 2030.
Which, DGMW, appears to be very much potentially possible given what we've heard recently. It just wasn't always known that would likely be the case; TSMC was (until now) pretty cagey about what comes post-A16.
This could potentially shorten their runway and lead to higher costs, but if competition (from Intel designs and/or processes) demands it, that's not necessarily an overall bad thing for consumers.
It could lead to lower prices on better tech faster long-term, especially if TSMC ramps production (especially in more fabs) more quickly on newer nodes.
It's like it was only yesterday (and truly was only a few months ago iiirc) TSMC very-much did not want to produce 2nm in the US (until much later)...yet here we are (apparently).
that’s risky business
Just imagine there being serious issues with them and losing trust in that market space.
www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/athlon-64-3000.c47
hw-museum.cz/cpu/399/amd-athlon-64-3000plus--venice-
I think I was waiting for something like that again (mobile T-birds/Breds/Barton), and we did get that with Denmark imo; the 939 Opteron X2's. I also think dual-channel was actually a worth-while upgrade.
I had a 165 and 170. Not in that order; the former because I released the magic smoke on the latter by cracking it with too much pressure on a WB mount.
Only time I ever did that, including many-a vapochill mounts. Slightly embarrassing, but it was 20 years ago.
Good times, those Opterons. They should do that again, even if a small run. If the new Opterons are 16 ('c') and the general consumer parts 12 ('non-c'), it would be fun to have that option to play around with.
Even if they're clocked low because of more cores (and general server usage) it could bring some fun back to overclocking to see what they could really do with more power and a decent cooling setup. Except by some (all?) accounts the high-end Nova is also TSMC 2nm, like AL 3nm (instead of 20A).
The lower-end/mobile parts (Panther and perhaps later?) will supposedly be 18A. At least that's what some are saying. There is the idea of 14A looming, but that appears anything but a certainty by then.
That should tell you something.
That said, that doesn't mean Nova will be a bad arch. It might be very good, especially with DDR6. But it also might be very expensive.
I don't know who will win, but by all accounts AMD appears to be making the right moves to stay competitive on a less-expensive platform. To me, that's what they do best and will continue to do it, which is good.
Even if there are some advantages to using Intel (which may or may not end up being the case), it would appear AMD, at the very least, will not give up the position they've held for decades (of better value).
TBH, I'm more curious of seeing AMD's 12/16-core versus nVIDIA's ARM design (10+10?). That uncertainty, but conceivable excitement, of WoA using nVIDIA, looms large (and if nVIDIA can develop that ecosystem).
From there we may see Sound Wave evolve into an actual competitor (in later gens). That may actually be the future for many people, although I'm not pretending it will be tomorrow.
It's one of those things that in theory both Intel and nVIDIA might fight with slightly better PPC through more cores/parallelism, and AMD through higher clocks...and I'm curious how people respond to that.
Intel may also fight with high clocks, but nVIDIA likely efficient ones (as they do with GPUs), and it will be interesting to see how that all shakes out, especially wrt to how nVIDIA performs on WoA.
I don't think Intel is even thinking about the ARM market seriously yet, and they should. AMD appears to be playing it safe, and may develop it further as nVIDIA establishes it, which at least shows initiative.