How capacity constrained will AMD be for the next 4 years?

[CHADBOGA]

With how promising Zen 2 looks, I was not surprised that AMD chose to price the Ryzen 3000 series higher than many had hoped for, mainly because I assumed that AMD could not have met demand, if they had priced Ryzen 3000, as some leaks had suggested they might.

With AMD also looking to increase GPU marketshare by releasing a new GPU architecture, I started wondering how much capacity does TSMC have that they can give to AMD?

Perhaps AMD will be able to offload some stuff to another foundry(if they are capable of producing the goods), but it seems like AMD's marketshare gains will be limited by what TSMC can provide.

With Intel's unprecedented stumbles on the manufacturing front, I doubt that TSMC would have foreseen this possibility and built up enough capacity to allow AMD to fully capitalise here, as I presume that there is a long lead time involved in significantly increasing your leading edge manufacturing process capacity.

So what are people's thoughts on how much marketshare AMD can get to over the next 3+ years, particularly if Intel continues to stumble?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Let's set aside Navi for a moment. I do not think it's priced to take any marketshare given its apparent performance. Matisse, on the other hand, is priced well-enough to sell a lot of units. Only surprises there (to me) are the $749 3950X (thought it would be $599-$649, if it even existed) and the absence of an 8c/16t chip in the same price position as the R7 2700. But given the prices from 2017, I shouldn't be too surprised about that.

Capacity shouldn't be too bad. TSMC is seeing slowdowns from the mobile sector. AMD can gobble up that capacity. They will not suffer constraints like they did back in 2004-2005.

That being said, they won't take huge amounts of total marketshare until Renoir launches next year. That is the chip that can take the fight to budget OEM boxes and notebooks. Picasso won't get the job done on its own.

 

[ubern00b]

It's priced at roughly the same price brackets as the last 2 gens at least where core counts are concerned, considering there hasn't been a 12 core and 16 core part previous apart from threadripper. Also prices of first gen and even now the 2nd have come down so you have to look at the release prices to compare them.

If it is priced slightly higher that's more likely to do with increased manufacturing costs from 7nm and continued r+d having gone into 3 ryzen generations and nothing to do with tsmc capacity, Dr Lisa Su has stated they have a very good relationship with tsmc and have faith in them being able to continue to deliver all of their 7nm parts including gpu's and CPU's in a recent interview.

Will this change with the release of new consoles on top of everything else, that's anyone's guess though you know what the say about when you assume, it makes an ASS out of U and ME...

 

[sandorski]

Good question, one would need to see the future to know for sure. Someone probably knows the details, but it will depend on how much capacity TSMC has vs x86 CPU Demand. I suspect it is > 100%, but could be wrong, even if it is they have a lot of other customers to deal with that have their own large volume needs. What AMD is willing to Pay will, at some point, be a determining factor. Given how much AMD has gained with the Zen product lines, they have a lot of room to give up some of those gains to Production Costs. I am certain AMD knows the answers to all of these questions and knows what they can potentially achieve. They probably have some resources dedicated to setting up manufacturing with Samsung, just in case or to keep Costs reasonable.

AMD's marketshare is still only slightly better than 17%, so they have a long way to go. I really doubt they could double that within a year, but maybe. Intel seems to be behind, but they keep releasing CPUs that maintain the Gaming Crown, albeit losing Power Consumption, Multicore performance, etc, but they are keeping relevant enough to maintain a certain level of Market Demand. That also plays into it, just because we know AMD is killing it, that doesn't mean this knowledge is widespread and/or will sway significant Sales from Intel to AMD in the first place.

 

[Thunder 57]

I think AMD priced it as they did because they do not want to be the budget brand, and because the chips are worth the cost. The ridiculous rumors about pricing were nonsense to begin with. AMD would be stupid to have priced them so low.

I've heard the marketshare/mindshare argument too much. Low prices don't help AMD when it's RX 570 beats the 1050 Ti by a lot and yet the 1050 Ti sells much more. AMD needs the higher margins.

Even at the current pricing, AMD is giving out plenty of performance/dollar. Also, it's a lot easier to lower prices than raise them (some have said get marketshare/mindshare, then raise prices). Another thing, higher pricing leaves room for black friday sales and the such.

 

[Arkaign]

I think AMD priced it as they did because they do not want to be the budget brand, and because the chips are worth the cost. The ridiculous rumors about pricing were nonsense to begin with. AMD would be stupid to have priced them so low.

I've heard the marketshare/mindshare argument too much. Low prices don't help AMD when it's RX 570 beats the 1050 Ti by a lot and yet the 1050 Ti sells much more. AMD needs the higher margins.

Even at the current pricing, AMD is giving out plenty of performance/dollar. Also, it's a lot easier to lower prices than raise them (some have said get marketshare/mindshare, then raise prices). Another thing, higher pricing leaves room for black friday sales and the such.

Preach. That one imbecile who has been chock full of BS for his entire 'career' was spreading obviously bogus crap around, especially the prices for the 3000 series. I tried to tell people that AMD will charge what the market will bear, but some didn't want to listen.

It's still better value than Intel at most SKUs IMHO, but far from the fanfiction BS we saw spread all over from Adored. His credibility is below 0% by now.

 

[NTMBK]

The consoles are going to eat a lot of 7nm capacity. In the first year of the PS4 it sold 14 million units. That's a huge number of console APUs that AMD needs to be fabbing and getting to their customer in time to get on shelves for next year's launch. Any sales of standalone Navi GPUs are a drop in the ocean by comparison.

 

[bsp2020]

All the new Zen 2 based products are priced above $200. So, it will be a while before AMD starts to sell their Zen 2 based products in real high volume. Also, less than half of the silicon that goes into Zen 2 based desktop processor is 7nm. If TSMC was able to supply Apple with their 7nm chips, TSMC will not have any problem supplying AMD since, by the time AMD really ramps up the volume some time next year, high volume mobile chip providers have moved on to 7nm+ and/or 5nm.

Either that or AMD would make so much money that they can design their CPUs to be fabbed at both TSMC and Samsung like Apple did with their A9.

 

[maddie]

The consoles are going to eat a lot of 7nm capacity. In the first year of the PS4 it sold 14 million units. That's a huge number of console APUs that AMD needs to be fabbing and getting to their customer in time to get on shelves for next year's launch. Any sales of standalone Navi GPUs are a drop in the ocean by comparison.

Consoles are 7nm+, is this the same production line as 7nm?

In any case, AMD's CEO is saying no problems with capacity. I'm assuming this statement is based on their projected sales numbers.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Consoles are 7nm+, is this the same production line as 7nm?

I'm thinking not. 7nm+ is EUV, 7nm is not.

 

[maddie]

I'm thinking not. 7nm+ is EUV, 7nm is not.

Therefore the consoles will not remove capacity from 7nm products. This is concerning NMTBK's post.

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...be-for-the-next-4-years.2566979/post-39858852

 

[caswow]

nvidia going samsung will "help" too

 

[Yeroon]

Considering the 64c epyc parts use 8 chiplets at a time, vs all but one of the desktop parts using 1, I doubt the 3000 series pricing has anything to do with 7nm capacity.
Plus, last time AMD was ahead in performance, supply and the delivery chain hamstrung their ability to capitalize on it. I'm sure they've not forgotten about that, and have their ducks in a row this time.

 

[NTMBK]

Consoles are 7nm+, is this the same production line as 7nm?

In any case, AMD's CEO is saying no problems with capacity. I'm assuming this statement is based on their projected sales numbers.

Good point! EUV will be a separate production line. Though I wouldn't be surprised in some 7nm lines get converted over to 7+.

 

[zinfamous]

AFAIK, the only competition for 7nm at TSMC is AMD and Apple. Nvdia won't be bothering with 7nm for another year at the earliest, I think.

AMD is still using GloFo for their 12 and 14nm low-end parts, and 12nm, I believe, for all the ISO dies on Zen 2 chips?

I think AMD will be fine, even with Apple eating up the wafers that they will eat up. Zen 2 prices could also be a good sign for AMD's confidence in boosting margins this year and substantially increasing their cash on hand which has been....limited for some time, lol.

 

[Ajay]

nvidia going samsung will "help" too

Is that confirmed? I haven't seen any definitive statements yet.

 

[Ajay]

No idea how many 7n wafers are being produced by TSMC nor what the range of yield rates are.

 

[Schmide]

This is the same stupid argument people made during the Athlon 64 era. AMD was never capacity constrained, they were blocked by intel's strong arm tactics. Thankfully this has a much less likely chance of repeating due to the FTC ruling.

Please don't attempt to repeat the FUD.

 

[BigDaveX]

This is the same stupid argument people made during the Athlon 64 era. AMD was never capacity constrained, they were blocked by intel's strong arm tactics. Thankfully this has a much less likely chance of repeating due to the FTC ruling.

Please don't attempt to repeat the FUD.

AMD weren't capacity constrained? You mean they could have produced enough Athlon 64s to take over the market leadership if Intel hadn't been playing so dirty (and corporate buyers didn't have such an ingrained "Intel-only" mentality)? I've never seen anything to indicate that was the case.

 

[moinmoin]

This thread disappoints me. I was expecting it to be about AMD's design capacity considering they are limited by work force size and all designs they launched up to now where started and at least in planning phase even before the first Ryzen was launched. Since then the success of AMD's latest efforts are becoming obvious to more and more people and industry partners, the finances as well as stock valuation are improving, and AMD is capable of improving the work environment for the post-Zen 3 and post-Navi designs with better funding and more hands. So how capacity constrained will AMD's designs and products be for the next 4 years?

Instead it's about capacity constrains dedicated foundries like TSMC and Samsung Semicoductor supposedly face in the mind of some stubborn people, even though their new nodes regularly start out with big fat order books in the hundred of millions for new mobile phone gens, an amount all the PC CPU and GPU chips could only dream about. What a waste of thread space.

 

[exquisitechar]

Not at all, I'd say.

No idea how many 7n wafers are being produced by TSMC nor what the range of yield rates are.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1145012516616957952

 

[Schmide]

AMD weren't capacity constrained? You mean they could have produced enough Athlon 64s to take over the market leadership if Intel hadn't been playing so dirty (and corporate buyers didn't have such an ingrained "Intel-only" mentality)? I've never seen anything to indicate that was the case.

Read it yourself https://www.amd.com/Documents/AMD-Intel_Full_Complaint.pdf

They do talk about capacity constants, but this was at the OEM level not the FAB and solely artificial.

There is plenty out there. Look for it.

Edit:

The chip isn't even out, the channels haven't been filled with new product. Netbook, laptops OEMs showed up at the shows with a couple products and yeah they have a FEW server contracts, but so much has to be moved to get to the final piece in the puzzle. When AMD started making inroads back in the day, this was the first reason given by many. Intel mentions it in their rebuttal.

https://www.intel.com/pressroom/legal/docs/AMD_answer.pdf

You can go further into the FTC settlement

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/pre...charges-anticompetitive-conduct-against-intel

But capacity constraints against an already dominant player before launch. No reason for it. To reflective of past arguments.

 

[NTMBK]

AFAIK, the only competition for 7nm at TSMC is AMD and Apple. Nvdia won't be bothering with 7nm for another year at the earliest, I think.

Don't forget Mediatek, Huawei, and Qualcomm.

 

[BigDaveX]

Read it yourself https://www.amd.com/Documents/AMD-Intel_Full_Complaint.pdf

They do talk about capacity constants, but this was at the OEM level not the FAB and solely artificial.

There is plenty out there. Look for it.

Are you by any chance referring to this part of the document:

Intel has unlawfully maintained the monopoly IBM bestowed on it and systematically excluded AMD from any meaningful opportunity to compete for market share by preventing the companies that buy chips and build computers from freely deploying AMD processors; by relegating AMD to the low-end of the market; by preventing AMD from achieving the minimum scale necessary to become a full-fledged, competitive alternative to Intel; and by erecting impediments to AMD’s ability to increase its productive capacity for the next generation of AMD’s state of the art microprocessors.

Because the bolded part looks to me like AMD themselves were acknowledging that they didn't have the production capacity to take over the market leadership, even if Intel's dirty deals hadn't prevented them from having any opportunity to do so.

 

[Schmide]

Are you by any chance referring to this part of the document:



Because the bolded part looks to me like AMD themselves were acknowledging that they didn't have the production capacity to take over the market leadership, even if Intel's dirty deals hadn't prevented them from having any opportunity to do so.

erecting - create or establish

impediments - a hindrance or obstruction in doing something.

aka outside influence