Amd Zen 5 Cpus Might Get Delayed To 2024 2025 Due To Tsmc S Priority Allocation Of 3Nm Node To Intel Apple

AMD Zen 5 CPUs Based on The Next-Gen TSMC 3nm Node Might Face A Potential Delay, Alleges Report

The report states that the TSMC 3nm process node has been prioritized by two big companies, Intel & Apple, who have invested a lot in acquiring the next-gen process node and are marked as a ‘VIP’ customer for the process. There are also other customers including AMD, NVIDIA & MediaTek who are also hoping to get access to the 3nm node but they are not expected to start until the end of 2023 which means that production for the next-gen products based on the process will be pushed into either 2024 or 2025. Now we cannot say for sure if AMD will be using TSMC’s 3nm process node for its Zen 5 core-based processors. We only know that Zen 4 will be utilizing the TSMC 5nm process node which NVIDIA will also be utilized for its next gaming offerings (TSMC 4N). Based on this report, there are three likely options for AMD. One is that they have to wait till 2024-2025 to get their Zen 5 cores produced. This will mark a 2-year cadence considering that Zen 3 launched in late 2020 and will be replaced in late 2022. The most likely scenario is that AMD will push the launch of Zen 5 to late 2024 or early 2025. The other two options are that AMD leverages its Zen 5 process node from the N5P process which is a far optimized version of the N5 node and a better version compared to the 4N node that green team (NVIDIA) is utilizing. But given that Zen 5 is going to be a major architectural overhaul, it does not make sense not to have it on the latest process node too as in N3. The most unlikely scenario is that AMD does manage to negotiate with TSMC for early access but given that there are two big players already fighting for N3 wafers, AMD would end up with limited supply leading to lower than expected shipments in 2024.

TSMC Fabricated Chips (Expected - Subject To Change):

The first case does sound more possible since AMD can do an intermediate Zen 4 launch with V-Cache that could last a year and be very competitive against Intel’s gaming CPU options until they launch Zen 5. So 2022 would be Zen 4 vanilla followed by Zen 4 with V-Cache in 2023 and then a Zen 5 launch happening late 2024. Now, this is all rumor for now and should be treated as such but we definitely want to see Zen 5 in action sooner rather than later.