Since about the middle of last year, AMD has been the largest customer of TSMC 7nm wafers. This status fell to her after Apple transferred the production of most key products to the 5nm process. However, AMD was not TSMC’s most profitable customer in 2020 (even after Apple), as (after Apple) Hi-Silicon (Huawei) came in second, Qualcomm in third, Nvidia in fourth, Broadcom in fifth and AMD in sixth (albeit differences between Nvidia, Broadcom and AMD were only slight).
This year, the situation will be different. Orders have long been closed, so – in addition to the position in 7nm production – it is known that the second largest customer of TSMC after Apple is AMD. For the year-on-year shift from sixth to second place, we award Lisa Su the Virtual Jumper of the Year award, which she can imaginarily place on a table or hang on a wall – depending on where she stands out better. But so far nothing new, rather just a recapitulation.
As orders for 5nm and 3nm processes for the coming years are more or less given, we learn that in the case of both, AMD will be the largest customer in the “HPC” segment. In the context of TSMC manufacturing, this is the idea of powerful chips in general – whether x86 processors or graphics cores. It is therefore an industry in which AMD, Nvidia and Intel are the largest TSMC customers. The second large group are manufacturers of mobile chips, mainly ARM, such as Apple, formerly Hi-Silicon, then Qualcomm and others.
This means that neither Intel nor Nvidia will have more 5nm and 3nm capacity than AMD. When the news last spring that Intel had reserved 6nm and 3nm of TSMC capacity, followed by information that Nvidia had reserved the 5nm TSMC process, some sites interpreted it as meaning that these manufacturers had reserved all (remaining) capacity of the process and AMD he is unlucky. As it turns out, the situation is not so dramatic and AMD’s position in the capacities of both key generations of production processes will not be bad.
We know from current (official and leaked) information that the 5nm process will be used by AMD to produce Radeons with RDNA 3 architecture (H2 2022), Ryzens / Threadripers / Epics with cores Zen 4 (H2 2022) and APU with cores Zen 4 (Q1 2023?). The 3nm process is talked about in the context of all known processors and APUs with cores Zen 5 (2024). In the era of both, AMD will likely use another 6nm process (EUV version of the 7nm process) to produce chipsets that do not require the most powerful process available.
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