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AMD Zen 4 5nm Products will launch in 2021

AMD has been on a red hot streak lately and it looks like it can't get anything wrong. If this report from China Times is to be believed (and this is usually a reliable source) then TSMC's 5nm testing is going very well and the first 3 customers have already been locked in - including AMD. According to the schedule obtained by China Times, AMD's 5nm products will be landing in early 2021 with mass production for 5nm scheduled in 2020.

AMD among first three customers to grab TSMC 5nm production capacity, NVIDIA missing from the picture
What is really amazing to hear in the report is that TSMC's 5nm yield has already crossed 7nm - which is quite the feat. This would mean that TSMC's 5nm will become viable sooner than expected and the transition from 7nm to 5nm can begin in earnest as well. The three customers that will be able to grab the first wave of production capacity are Apple, HiSilicon and AMD. While it is not surprising to see Apple get the first bite, it is interesting to see NVIDIA missing from this list - as I would have assumed they would be first in line to grab onto a process advantage (although this might be a questionable assumption considering they have yet to launch 7nm GPUs).

amd-5nm-feature-image.jpg


As per my understanding, the reason NVIDIA has yet to jump to 7nm is because of yield issues. If TSMC has managed to get 5nm yield higher than 7nm already than I can only assume that this statistic will only get better by 2021. If NVIDIA is no longer able to get the first bite of the product, then they might be at a disadvantage if AMD decides to revive its GPU side of things and make a comeback - which is expected to happen with the launch of "big Navi".

On the other hand, the pressure has just increased even further for Intel - which is struggling to push 10nm out and aims to achieve 7nm by 2021. For the layman - Intel's 7nm is roughly equal to 5nm and is based on EUV, so it should be easier to execute than 10nm (counter-intuitively) which is not based on EUV. If Intel can get to 7nm by 2021, then at the very least, it will be on an equal footing with TSMC. Any other scenario would mean Intel losing even more market share and the stock price taking a big hit.

TSMC's 5nm process has crossed 50% yield according to the report (which is what the yield for 7nm supposedly is right now) and monthly production capacity has been increased from 50000 units to 70000 units with 80000 units on the horizon. Thew new 5nm process is 1.8 times as dense as the older 7nm one (offering even more scalability for AMD's MCM philosophy) and can increase clock speeds by 15%. This means that a CPU and GPU that are currently netting 4.4 GHz and 1700 MHz respectively, will be able to hit the 5.0GHz and 1955 MHz marks quite easily.

 

Ascend

Member
People generally say that AMD is inferior because they are only able to keep up with nVidia because they are on a lower node, completely forgetting that being on a lower node also brings its own challenges, especially if you're one of the first that does this.

Traditionally, AMD jumps on the lower nodes first, while nVidia follows much later when it has already matured. But nodes are changing quite fast lately. It might even be possible that we see AMD on 5nm while nVidia just started on 7nm.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Looks on track. N5/5nm is full EUV if I remember right. Having way better than expected yields is great, but I'm still cautious given how long EUV has taken to get here and how many setbacks it has had in the past. (Or at least I remember a lot of "EUV is coming soon" articles over the years)

People generally say that AMD is inferior because they are only able to keep up with nVidia because they are on a lower node, completely forgetting that being on a lower node also brings its own challenges, especially if you're one of the first that does this.

Traditionally, AMD jumps on the lower nodes first, while nVidia follows much later when it has already matured. But nodes are changing quite fast lately. It might even be possible that we see AMD on 5nm while nVidia just started on 7nm.
Possible, but unlikely. Chiplets are what allow for jumping on these nodes so early. GPUs won't be able to join in so quickly with the comparatively larger die sizes. Going to avoid going on a tangent about Nvidia on 7nm.
 
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So 5nm Ryzen 5000 is coming 1H 2021 and 5nm yields already looking very good, according to this source at least.

Intel, meanwhile, have simply not advanced nearly as far along with their 7nm due for 2021/22, because if they had, I'd have heard about it by now. There's very little info on their 7nm, and it will be very worrying for Intel shareholders if mass production of their 7nm products only happens in 2022.
 

Ascend

Member
Possible, but unlikely. Chiplets are what allow for jumping on these nodes so early. GPUs won't be able to join in so quickly with the comparatively larger die sizes. Going to avoid going on a tangent about Nvidia on 7nm.
Well... I dunno. The 5700XT chip isn't that large. Sure. It's large compared to chiplets, but 251 mm2 isn't infeasible to use on a relatively new node. That's also probably the reason AMD didn't release a high-end Navi GPU to start out with. Look at what happened with the Radeon VII.

The upcoming year and a half is going to be extremely interesting.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Well... I dunno. The 5700XT chip isn't that large. Sure. It's large compared to chiplets, but 251 mm2 isn't infeasible to use on a relatively new node. That's also probably the reason AMD didn't release a high-end Navi GPU to start out with. Look at what happened with the Radeon VII. The upcoming year and a half is going to be extremely interesting.
Not huge and not infeasible, no, but it is just maths. Bigger chips, worse yields, higher cost. I'd definitely want to evaluate a node with small chips or big, high value chips.
You're right though, exciting times!

5nm? How do companies get away with this? Next year they will be calling 14nm nodes 3.5nm...
giphy.gif

This is an actual node shrink. Not marketing.
For reference:
Intel's 10 nm is comparable to foundries 7 nm while Intel's 7 nm is comparable to foundries 5 nm
 

Solarstrike

Member
I'm reading the OP thinking, wow! What an insightful article by this GAF user. Then i went to the link and lol and wtf man. Word for word. Really? :cry:
 
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