Let’s forget the semiconductor crisis and let’s put it aside, because the market is in a fragile balance where some want to push to the limit and the rest try to keep up, although without success for now. And it is that TSMC, Intel, Apple and AMD are in a war for the forefront of the technique of semiconductors and nanometers that, as expected, will not be clean, fair or equal. To the point that AMD Zen 5 could either be delayed or ineligible for the 3nm As planned.
Pushing too hard, overestimating potential sales, and pushing can be a train about to go off the rails. The industry is not keeping up with the big three and even Samsung seems to be wary of the speed and investment being made around the world. But if your neighbor presses you do the same and in that absurd war it seems that we are immersed if we take into account that the two big ones are “bullying” the smallest.
Apple and Intel move and leave AMD out
The game is in two chip wafer creation companies: Intel and TSMC, where there is a famous saying that reflects what is happening: “if you can’t beat your enemy, join him” Intel is still almost a year and a half behind against TSMC and thus AMD would take advantage of the temporary advantage to launch its processors and hit the blue giant.
Well, how do you stop the temporary bleeding until you recover? With two arguments, money and reserved production capacity. We all know that Apple is a priority client of TSMC, but now Intel, by competing with it, has caught up with it, has loosened its portfolio and has pushed AMD out of its chair for the cutting-edge 3nm node and possibly for the 2nm.
The excuse? Their GPU ARC Battlemagewhich prevents AMD from negotiating with TSMC in the short term since everything that will be produced in wafers with this N3 is already reserved, but… Not forever.
Year and a half of GAP, Zen 5 to 5 nm?
Timing defines everything if we are talking about races, no matter the sector, the most valuable resource is measured in seconds, hours, weeks and months, objectively in years, but above all it is achieved at the stroke of a checkbook in this case.
Time cannot be bought, but you can buy the production in that temporary space and that is the same as actually buying it if we are talking about chips. Well, it has been leaked that Apple and Intel have all the 3nm production for them exclusively in all of 2023 and there is even speculation with the first quarter of 2024.
This time precision is due to TSMC estimates with the volume production ramp for said N3 node, so we are talking about the fact that if this is true AMD would not have a gap in said production capacity until 2025, or what it is Still, Intel would have gotten AMD to take one of the two most damaging paths.
The first would be to keep Zen 5 at 5nm as Zen 4 will, while the second would be to delay the arrival of the Ryzen 8000 so that TSMC can have the new FABs working and thereby manufacture more wafers per day, month and quarter, thus allowing AMD to launch its processors on the market.
By then Meteor Lake should be about to come out, with which Intel would have cut at least a year out of that year and a half of unfavorable time difference. A brilliant move that would force AMD to turn to Samsung if it has its N3+ node with OAG ready, which today faces delays at various points in the chain. In addition, it is estimated that the move will be repeated for 2nm, where Intel and Apple would already be in negotiations to start acquiring the first chips at some point in 2025, these already with the new transistors. GAAFET.
What seems clear is that Zen 5 will not finally be manufactured at 3nm except for a miracle from TSMC at the last moment.
