GF to tape out its first 7nm chip, an AMD processor later this year

[wahdangun]

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333326

.
Later this year, GF will use immersion steppers to tape out its first 7nm chip, an AMD processor. An IBM processor will follow with ASICs coming in 2019, Patton said.

GF made the size of its 7nm pitches and SRAM cells similar to those of TSMC to let designers like AMD use both foundries. AMD “will have more demand than we have capacity, so I have no issues with that,” he said of AMD using the Taiwan foundry

Wow, this is huge, so maybe right now GF is in capacity constraints. That's explain why Rx gpu still hard to find, and now AMD doesn't have to pay WSA penalties again.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

The link doesn't take me to the article, and I couldn't find it at eetimes.com, but this article at their asian site appears to contain the text you quoted.

Wow, this is huge, so maybe right now GF is in capacity constraints.

Yeah. I've heard rumors about that, but this is the first time I see it from actual GloFo sources. The margin AMD gets from Ryzens has to be way higher than what they'd make out of their current GPU lineup, given the prices they can expect. I wouldn't expect to see Vega 2 (at least the 12nm GloFo version) in any real volume.

Sucks, I want a new GPU and the prices are still insane.

 

[jpiniero]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

 

[wahdangun]

The link doesn't take me to the article, and I couldn't find it at eetimes.com, but this article at their asian site appears to contain the text you quoted.



Yeah. I've heard rumors about that, but this is the first time I see it from actual GloFo sources. The margin AMD gets from Ryzens has to be way higher than what they'd make out of their current GPU lineup, given the prices they can expect. I wouldn't expect to see Vega 2 (at least the 12nm GloFo version) in any real volume.

Sucks, I want a new GPU and the prices are still insane.

Thanks, I have fixed the link. There will be no 12nm Vega, they skip it, maybe because of capacity constraints.

The gpu price actually have normalize, but only for nvdia, somehow AMD gpu is hard to find and still above MSRP

 

[wahdangun]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

I guess the delay with GF was to make sure AMD can use GF and TMSC simultaneously without major changes.

 

[geoxile]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

Or Zen is more of a hit than expected and they're increasing production and want to hit the ground running with Zen 2.

 

[ksec]

so maybe right now GF is in capacity constraints.

Is that even news? AMD is selling as much as they can make. GF needs to up the game with capacity, and find a 3rd large customer apart from IBM and AMD. TSMC has Apple, Samsung has Qualcomm. Samsung had to grab whatever it can when Apple left them, empty Fab is extremely expensive, and they had their own SoC to hold on to. What has GF got as bottom line? If they are relying on AMD as their bottom line they better expand for its customer's needs.

I guess this is the risk in foundry business when you don't have predictable large sales volume. Intel has a fairly stable volume, Qualcomm and Apple too.

As AMD move all GPU business back to TSMC, hopefully this should off load enough capacity for their CPU side. Given next Playstation will likely be using Zen as well, may be it is wise to move APU to TSMC, since whatever custom founder in Microsoft or Sony will likely end up in TSMC as well.

 

[jpiniero]

I guess the delay with GF was to make sure AMD can use GF and TMSC simultaneously without major changes.

Plausible. It could also mean AMD is going to use TSMC as their main supplier for everything and will use GloFo when it makes sense/cheaper accounting for the WSA tax.

 

[dark zero]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

I see AMD using more Samsung instead of TSMC. TSMC tipically goes more for Apple and Qualcomm instead of AMD or Mediatek.

Remember that Qualcomm moved to TSMC and Samsung helped in an indirect way to GloFo along IBM. So is time to AMD to go along Samsung and GloFo.

 

[formulav8]

Plausible. It could also mean AMD is going to use TSMC as their main supplier for everything

IIRC, I read somewhere that Epyc will be using Tmsc 7nm. Vega of course is already sampling from there. I believe I got the info from the ER call..

 

[piesquared]

I'm not seeing anywhere where it implies that AMD is capacity constrained, or that GloFo isn't as far along with 7nm as thought. There's no revelations here that i can see anyway, AMD has said all along that they will have 7nm samples by the end of the year. Have they said something otherwise in this article, or has GloFo said they delayed 7nm? The full capacity is referring to next gen, no?

 

[ksec]

I see AMD using more Samsung instead of TSMC. TSMC tipically goes more for Apple and Qualcomm instead of AMD or Mediatek.

Remember that Qualcomm moved to TSMC and Samsung helped in an indirect way to GloFo along IBM. So is time to AMD to go along Samsung and GloFo.

Qualcomm is now in bed with Samsung. At least for the next 1 - 2 SoC, and may be for longer if they could get Samsung to stop investing in Exynos. So it is highly unlikely AMD will use Samsung.

 

[Lodix]

Qualcomm is now in bed with Samsung. At least for the next 1 - 2 SoC, and may be for longer if they could get Samsung to stop investing in Exynos. So it is highly unlikely AMD will use Samsung.

Qualcomm is reported to use TSMC's 7nm for their next flagship SOC in early 2019. Because they were not confident of Samsung getting their 7nm with EUV ready on time.

But this is just one thing gap and Qualcomm will get back to Samsung asap. They have some kind of long term agreement to work together in various ways. They announced some weeks ago that they will manufacture Qualcomm's 5G chips for 2019.

Edit: And Samsung doesn't have any intention in stopping their efforts in designing SOCs indeed they are investing more with time ( not just for mobile ) and they are recruiting more engineers.

 

[maddie]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

Curious. Why this?

 

[jpiniero]

Curious. Why this?

You'd think they would need to tape out sooner rather than later if Matisse/Rome was shipping in 1H 2019.

 

[Ajay]

Plausible. It could also mean AMD is going to use TSMC as their main supplier for everything and will use GloFo when it makes sense/cheaper accounting for the WSA tax.

I thought the WSA tax was for wafers *not made*. In which case, with Fab 20 @ 100% utilization, the tax should be zero.

 

[Ajay]

You'd think they would need to tape out sooner rather than later if Matisse/Rome was shipping in 1H 2019.

Doesn't AMD/GF need around ~15 months from tapeout to HVM? If so, then shipping in 1H19 should be very doable.

 

[wahdangun]

Is that even news? AMD is selling as much as they can make. GF needs to up the game with capacity, and find a 3rd large customer apart from IBM and AMD. TSMC has Apple, Samsung has Qualcomm. Samsung had to grab whatever it can when Apple left them, empty Fab is extremely expensive, and they had their own SoC to hold on to. What has GF got as bottom line? If they are relying on AMD as their bottom line they better expand for its customer's needs.

I guess this is the risk in foundry business when you don't have predictable large sales volume. Intel has a fairly stable volume, Qualcomm and Apple too.

As AMD move all GPU business back to TSMC, hopefully this should off load enough capacity for their CPU side. Given next Playstation will likely be using Zen as well, may be it is wise to move APU to TSMC, since whatever custom founder in Microsoft or Sony will likely end up in TSMC as well.

Because just a couple years before AMD was forced to pay WSA penalties. So from not ordering enough to ordering as much as you can is really surprising.

Plausible. It could also mean AMD is going to use TSMC as their main supplier for everything and will use GloFo when it makes sense/cheaper accounting for the WSA tax.

Yeah initially they will use TSMC exclusively, but when GF ramping up to HVM they will switch to GF primary to evade WSA penalties.

 

[jpiniero]

I thought the WSA tax was for wafers *not made*. In which case, with Fab 20 @ 100% utilization, the tax should be zero.

IIRC they changed the WSA so that AMD can do whatever they want now but have to pay the tax to GloFo if they fab elsewhere.

 

[wahdangun]

IIRC they changed the WSA so that AMD can do whatever they want now but have to pay the tax to GloFo if they fab elsewhere.

But the penalties only applies if GF was not capacity constrained.

 

[wahdangun]

Doesn't AMD/GF need around ~15 months from tapeout to HVM? If so, then shipping in 1H19 should be very doable.

I guess AMD want to be more aggressive, especially when intel 10nm still disaster.

 

[jpiniero]

But the penalties only applies if GF was not capacity constrained.

Oh nice. If that was the case then focusing on TSMC and getting GloFo to be compatible makes a ton of sense.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Globalfoundries has only one leading edge FinFET foundry => Malta 8.2(8B EUV)
Globalfoundries however will have two and more leading edge FDSOI foundries => Chendgu, Dresden, and Malta 8.1(8A: NanoFrazor(EVG/SwissLitho) or JFIL(Canon) or DUV(193i+DSA))

8A/8B will be for 7nm FinFETs for the soon roadmap, but don't expect much. GlobalFoundries is getting funded for FDSOI, not FinFETs.

This is not to say GlobalFoundries FinFETs will be bad. Nope, definitely not bad. GlobalFoundries will have the all-round best of the 7nm gen at the cost-perspective side.

 

[raghu78]

Sounds like GloFo isn't as far along with 7 nm as perhaps thought. And it does kind of make it more likely that AMD is using TSMC for the CPU products as well.

GF has been telling from 2016 that they expect to be in risk production on 7LP by mid 2018 which puts HVM around mid 2019. I think 7nm Rome willl be at TSMC and arrive by mid 2019. 7nm Ryzen will be at GF and should probably tape out in Q3 2018 and launch by late Q3 2019. So here is how I think AMD's 7nm products will arrive. 7nm Vega at TSMC N7 shipping in Q1 2019. 7nm Navi and 7nm Rome at TSMC N7 shipping in Q2 2019 and 7nm Ryzen CPUs shipping in Q3 2019 and finally followed by 7nm Ryzen APUs in Q1 2020.

I guess the delay with GF was to make sure AMD can use GF and TMSC simultaneously without major changes.

There is no delay. Go back and read what GF has been saying all along.

Doesn't AMD/GF need around ~15 months from tapeout to HVM? If so, then shipping in 1H19 should be very doable.

I would expect atleast 12 months from tapeout to HVM.

 

[wahdangun]

GF has been telling from 2016 that they expect to be in risk production on 7LP by mid 2018 which puts HVM around mid 2019. I think 7nm Rome willl be at TSMC and arrive by mid 2019. 7nm Ryzen will be at GF and should probably tape out in Q3 2018 and launch by late Q3 2019. So here is how I think AMD's 7nm products will arrive. 7nm Vega at TSMC N7 shipping in Q1 2019. 7nm Navi and 7nm Rome at TSMC N7 shipping in Q2 2019 and 7nm Ryzen CPUs shipping in Q3 2019 and finally followed by 7nm Ryzen APUs in Q1 2020.



There is no delay. Go back and read what GF has been saying all along.



I would expect atleast 12 months from tapeout to HVM.

Q3 2019 for ryzen 3 ? No I don't think it will be that late.

Because GF must somehow make the node similar to TMSC so they must first analyze it before.