AMD Could Be Shifting Some of Its High-Performance Chip Production To TSMC Arizona

Oct 8, 2024 at 11:00am EDT
AMD Could Be Shifting Some of Its High-Performance Chip Production To TSMC Arizona 1

AMD is reportedly going to shift some of its high-performance chip production to TSMC's Arizona fab by next year.

AMD reportedly sourcing its 5nm high-performance chip production from TSMC Arizona

The chip giant AMD usually sources its chips from TSMC Taiwan and whether you look at the Radeon RX 7000 series based on the RDNA 3 architecture or the latest Zen 4 and Zen 5 series, all are manufactured using TSMC's process nodes. This time, it is expected that AMD will source its chips from America instead of Taiwan.

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The semiconductor giant TSMC started building its fab industry in Arizona state in 2021 and while it doesn't have a lot of customers, AMD could be one of the first. As reported by Tim Culpan, his sources say that AMD is going to manufacture its High-Performance Chips at TSMC Arizona in 2025.

These chips will utilize the 5nm process node and it's expected that these will be the N4 flavor. 5nm process node is available in various flavors, including N5, N5P, N4, N4P, and N4X. The N4 volume production was started in 2022 and could be part of AMD HPC chips, which will be taped out next year.

Not much has been shared about this plan as Tim reports that the officials declined to comment about customers or TSMC products. Nonetheless, it looks like the US is close to a complete AI hardware supply chain and we already have Apple's A16 being fabbed at TSMC Arizona's Fab 21 Phase 1 facility.

Recently, Amkor announced its collaboration with TSMC for advanced packaging in Arizona. Both companies have been collaborating to make advanced packaging with high-volume and leading-edge technologies and these are currently on their mission to define packaging technologies like Integrated Fan-Out and Chip Wafer on Substrate.

The InFO wafer-level packaging technology allows chips to be packaged closely and is a more cost-effective solution. CoWoS, on the other hand, is useful for connecting high-bandwidth memory to the GPU cores more efficiently but is a bit costlier. CoWoS will be crucial for high-performance chips from AMD and NVIDIA. However, Apple will do just fine with InFO as the packaging technology is ideal for mobile devices.

About the author: Sarfraz Khan is a hardware reporter with a focus on PC components and the builder community. With years of experience writing about PC hardware and laptops, his work has been featured on several reputable technology publications. Sarfraz's hands-on experience is demonstrated through his first-person accounts of using and comparing different hardware configurations, providing practical and relatable insights for everyday users. His technical analysis is respected by peers in the enthusiast community and has been cited by specialized hardware sites such as Germany's Igor's Lab.

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