Does TSMC's stellar 7nm bode well for future AMD products?

[R0H1T]

Looks like 7nm will be here for a while, at least for AMD & given how 28nm planar did over the course of 5(?) years can we expect 7nm to compete well or likely outperform Intel's 10nm in the years to come? This based on how well Zen2 does on mobile even relative to Icelake also the fact that Big Navi (RDNA2) will have much better efficiency on the same refined node, without EUV.

 

[kapone32]

Any refinement in terms of clock speed and IPC will see many improvements but AMD will not be on 7nm much longer.

 

[Vayra86]

I think this really starts with 'define 7nm'

When 90% of the chip is still larger then there is a lot to improve on 7nm. But when they market every iteration as a new shrink... yeah.

 

[ppn]

10% yes.

 

[mtcn77]

This argument is missing clauses. It has been announced that 7nm will be up for 5nm migration free of any further design cost.

 

[R0H1T]

This argument is missing clauses. It has been announced that 7nm will be up for 5nm migration free of any further design cost.

Not sure what you mean? AMD will keep making something or the other on 7nm probably for years to come, like console chips for instance.

Secondly 5nm will be expensive, in low supply & not really necessary (for every market segment) till the time Intel leapfrogs AMD in total performance or perf/W by a wide margin ~ which seems unlikely for the next year or two. The question I'm asking is basically twofold ~ seeing how 7nm (Ryzen) mobile chips fared so

1) Would 7nm do well in the next few years, especially vs Intel's 10nm(+++)
2) Will TSMC improve upon it greatly, like we've seen with 28nm planar?

 

[mtcn77]

Not sure what you mean? AMD will keep making something or the other on 7nm probably for years to come, like console chips for instance.

Secondly 5nm will be expensive, in low supply & not really necessary (for every market segment) till the time Intel leapfrogs AMD in total performance or perf/W by a wide margin ~ which seems unlikely for the next year or two. The question I'm asking is basically twofold ~ seeing how 7nm (Ryzen) mobile chips fared so

1) Would 7nm do well in the next few years, especially vs Intel's 10nm(+++)
2) Will TSMC improve upon it greatly, like we've seen with 28nm planar?

Depends on what you mean improve. I just stated free upgrades(think in terms of tsmc designing your ip for you). Of course, you pay the foundry's licensed manufacturing cut. You lost me on that.

Also 5nm will be expensive, but - as again my memory fails me - AMD made commitments to buyback wafers other partners opted out, in favour of 5nm. So, AMD will not be involved with the initial 5nm risk production, afaik.

 

[seronx]

AMD is going full swing to 5nm.

"AMD’s 5nm/7nm IC and graphics-card products that employ advanced flipchip and chiplet package constructions."
"reliability activities for 5nm/7nm AMD CPU/GPU/APU and graphic-card products"
"Worked with the TSMC 7nm and 5nm technology libraries"

AMD started immediately after TSMC entered risk production.

EUV allows for a return to the two year custom cadence. Start of engineering in 2H 2019 => product is deployed in 2H 2021.

 

[mtcn77]

So, is ryzen 4000 zen 3 or zen 2 5nm?(this is a loaded question)

 

[seronx]

So, is ryzen 4000 zen 3 or zen 2 5nm?(this is a loaded question)

Ryzen 4000 series Zen3 => 7nm // 1st Gen Fam 19h
<-- year in between -->
Ryzen 5000 series Zen4 => 5nm // 2nd Gen Fam 19h

 

[mtcn77]

Seronx you should write here more often. I'm not going to go through 30 pages of non stop reveals over at AT, though revelatory.

 

[ppn]

N7-2018
N7P-2019 +7% perf
N5-2020 1.84x density improvement
N5P-2021 +7%
N3-2022