Thursday, July 31st 2025

AMD Chips Made at TSMC USA to Cost 5-20 Percent More, But Worth it: CEO Lisa Su
In an interview with Bloomberg, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su revealed that the company's chips manufactured at the U.S. based fab of TSMC will cost anywhere between 5% to 20% more than the ones TSMC makes back home in Taiwan, but assured that the added cost and supply-chain resilience would make the price-hike worth the effort. Su alluded to the lack of supply-chain resilience being sorely felt by the tech industry during the COVID-19 pandemic years, causing significant second order effects across the world economy.
TSMC has a manufacturing facility in Arizona, but its most advanced node is 4 nm EUV, referred to internally as the N4 family of foundry nodes by TSMC. AMD makes various CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and other devices on the TSMC N4P node, but the company is transitioning to the new TSMC N2 (2 nm Nanosheet) node, starting with its next-generation "Zen 6" CPU family. It is widely expected that while the CCDs of "Zen 6" based Ryzen desktop and EPYC server processors are based on N2, the company will introduce new-generation I/O dies for both its client and server processors that will be built on TSMC N4P, advancing from the current TSMC N6.
Sources:
Bloomberg, Tech Radar
TSMC has a manufacturing facility in Arizona, but its most advanced node is 4 nm EUV, referred to internally as the N4 family of foundry nodes by TSMC. AMD makes various CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and other devices on the TSMC N4P node, but the company is transitioning to the new TSMC N2 (2 nm Nanosheet) node, starting with its next-generation "Zen 6" CPU family. It is widely expected that while the CCDs of "Zen 6" based Ryzen desktop and EPYC server processors are based on N2, the company will introduce new-generation I/O dies for both its client and server processors that will be built on TSMC N4P, advancing from the current TSMC N6.
26 Comments on AMD Chips Made at TSMC USA to Cost 5-20 Percent More, But Worth it: CEO Lisa Su
Otherwise, 'happy to see more domestic technology production.
Someone could say "you aren't going to pay that 5%-20% in the end Lisa, I will".
For me, I just hope that this statement means that they feel confident and ready to flood the market with more CPUs and GPUs. That they feel it's more important to have quantity to fulfill huge orders and try to get even more market share from Intel and whatever they can from Nvidia. They do need capacity against Nvidia, they will definitely need more capacity against Intel is 18A/14A starts producing good yields.
Until now I was speculating that AMD preferred to have a controllable inventory of CPUs/GPUs to not end up with a huge pile of unsellable products. I wish they become more aggressive and start producing more stuff for the market. Then we could hope prices to go down at least a little.
Consumer is already paying well above MSRP. So the prices go up again?
Not worth it for me...
So from the perspective of having a diversified supply chain, it's a small price to pay.
Presumably the chips produced at the US fabs would be the really high margin parts, Epic dies and such, so eithe AMD eats the increased cost or the client is not nearly as sensitive to pricing as consumers would be if the price increases.
Google price demand curve. This is why people predicting inflation spikes due to tariffs have been consistently wrong, they either don't understand or don't want to understand (bias) this Econ 101 concept.
www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demand-curve.asp
eu.dispatch.com/story/news/2025/07/24/intel-says-it-will-further-slow-construction-on-ohio-factories/85363393007/
AMD isn't going to eat costs - line go up.
So what AMD is really saying is that they remove the delays at ports, they remove the variability of tariffs, and they have local buyers which are willing to pump a crap ton of money into them. For that, there should basically be a financial wash.
What I read is that AMD is telling people that it wasn't as expensive as they thought, it won't really impact their profitability, and consumers could see some minor increase to costs...which may or may not be justified but definitely will support the bottom line profitability. Anyone else missing the obvious "we did it right" style victory claim? Man, this is a "I didn't read the rules of the forum explicitly forbidding political talk post."
Please check yourself, and refrain from getting a thread closed down. You too @SSGBryan.
(Said with a long, slow, southern draw) - The Captain to the prisoners in Cool Hand Luke
Translation:
Everyone in the US said they wanted chips made here, and we gots that, so now, it's time to "pay the piper"....
Pony up sukaz, and stop whining about it already......hahahaha :)
And from a purely logical perspective this just seems like a no-brainer for TSMC as well, having plants and tech offshore in the event of the worst-case scenario happening. As Q from 007 once said: "always have an escape plan".
Let's say 'It' is midranger and actually sells by AMD for $200, meaning it cost $98.20 to make
Then AIBs / OEMs / wholesalers and retailers buy AMDs parts, and mark them up further. Estimates of what the markup is from that to retail are mostly ~20-40%. Taking the midpoint of 30%, this is a $260 item at retail, +sales Tax since we're talking the US.
So lets take the midpoint of 12.5% additional cost to make in the US. That's on the $98.10. So if AMD keeps its margin the same, now it costs $110.36 to make and sells it for $211.44 to wholesalers / retailers etc. instead of $200
Retail likewise keeps its 30% margin the same too, which means retail price goes from $260 to 274.87
It' not even 15 bucks.
As an American, unlike quite a few posters here, very worth this extremely small and infrequent cost to have advanced chip production on US soil. I mean, In the past 5 months avg income in the US went up 2% while inflation drive prices up only 1%. I spent $57 getting BBQ with the wife last weekend.
$15?
I'm good with it.