AMD may leverage Samsung’s 4nm node to manufacture some of its mobile SoCs. This report comes from the Chinese media outlet UDN, pointing to the near full capacity of TSMC’s 4nm (N4) node. AMD has allegedly entrusted Samsung Electronics with the production of its unreleased processors. It’s unclear which SKUs will be fabbed by the Korean foundry, but this source believes Samsung will manufacture AMD’s Chromebook APUs.
The Ryzen 7040 series processors, codenamed “Phoenix“, are AMD’s low-power notebook processors with the U suffix and a TDP of 15-28W. These APUs were delayed multiple times, and the iGPU clocks were also reduced. Initially slated for a March release, these chips are yet to hit the retail market, with a tentative launch date of May 2023.
Samsung’s advanced process nodes have suffered from poor yields time and again. However, according to industry sources, the 4nm yields are gradually improving. Shifting low-volume production to a secondary foundry can be seen as a positive move, a strategy Qualcomm and NVIDIA have followed for a while now.
According to recent rumors, AMD’s next-gen Zen 5 client Ryzen processors and Radeon GPUs will leverage TSMC’s 4nm (N4) node, with only the Epyc-class CPUs leaping to 3nm (N3). If Samsung manages to satisfy AMD’s wafer demand, they may look at a larger share of the Korean foundry.
Source: UDN.
