Question How well would Zen 3 work on GloFo 12nm?

Asphodelus

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May 29, 2011
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With the extreme shortages of everything AMD/TSMC 7nm likely to continue for for the foreseeable future, perhaps even the entire generation, how feasible would it be for AMD to pull a Rocket Lake and move Ryzen 3 and lower products over to GloFo 12nm?
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
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With the extreme shortages of everything AMD/TSMC 7nm likely to continue for for the foreseeable future, perhaps even the entire generation, how feasible would it be for AMD to pull a Rocket Lake and move Ryzen 3 and lower products over to GloFo 12nm?
GloFo is also capacity constrained right now. Athlon 3000G and Athlon-based laptop are hard to find with proper price.
 

Jimzz

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2012
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GloFo is also capacity constrained right now. Athlon 3000G and Athlon-based laptop are hard to find with proper price.

I think thats more due to the I/O chip for the newer Zens. Can't sell new Zens without it so the older 3000g chips and such fall to the waste side.

Also with a lot of other chip shortages GF is probably trying to get as many of those customer as long term as they know AMD will not last past its current contract.
 

moinmoin

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Jun 1, 2017
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how feasible would it be for AMD to pull a Rocket Lake and move Ryzen 3 and lower products over to GloFo 12nm?
Waste of time and money. Even assuming GloFo still had capacity to spare, all the frequency increase Zen 2 and 3 had seen would need to be dialed back to Zen+ level, and the chiplet would be significantly bigger on GloFo's 12nm (so fewer dies per wafer), possibly even no longer fitting on the existing packages.

I think thats more due to the I/O chip for the newer Zens. Can't sell new Zens without it so the older 3000g chips and such fall to the waste side.
I don't think the former cut into the latter, both are in high demand. The APUs from GloFo got their probably last big push by making the part of the Chromebook/education laptop market, just in time that those are seeing massive demand due to increase in home schooling and home office. (That's likely also why 3000g is nowhere to be found, AMD serves OEM/ODMs first before the DIY market.)
 

AMDrulZ

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Jul 9, 2005
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With the current prices of graphics cards. AMD really needs to bring affordable APUs to market. That's were Intel has a uncontested advantage over AMD. They have many more processors featuring integrated graphics. The APUs from AMD are simply not price competitive against their Intel counterparts. Not to mention AMD. Only have 4 core APUs available on the desktop. Where as basically all Intel chips have integrated graphics. It's really too bad they are not cranking out & selling the 3400g at the $85 to $100 price point like the Ryzen 5 1600 AF used to be.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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With the current prices of graphics cards. AMD really needs to bring affordable APUs to market. That's were Intel has a uncontested advantage over AMD. They have many more processors featuring integrated graphics. The APUs from AMD are simply not price competitive against their Intel counterparts. Not to mention AMD. Only have 4 core APUs available on the desktop. Where as basically all Intel chips have integrated graphics. It's really too bad they are not cranking out & selling the 3400g at the $85 to $100 price point like the Ryzen 5 1600 AF used to be.

They are selling tons of Picasso, just on mobile.
 

AMDrulZ

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Jul 9, 2005
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Exactly if I was on the AMD management team. I would promote streamlining the SKUs at this point. To better meet demand for the COVID & Resurgent Crypto mining economies. By eliminating the Ryzen 3000 series cpus that require both a 12nm I/O die from Glo Flo & 7nm Core Die from TSMC. And focus on 7nm APUs for the desktop. That would free up 12nm capacity at Glo Flo for cheap 3400g APUs. While offering higher core count APUs on the AM4 platform. It would open up the possibility for people to actually Build AMD based PC's without needing discrete graphics. The freed up capacity at Glo Flo could also be used to increase discrete 12nm GPU production. To hopefully Allow for affordable GPU options even if they are a bit long in the tooth.
 
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NostaSeronx

Diamond Member
Sep 18, 2011
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Fab 8 has mostly ran down 12nm and completely dropped 14nm. Only existing designs and planned designs via agreements can be produced. Fab 8 is mostly returning back to PDSOI/FDSOI. With the switch happening sometime before 2023. The next big node at Fab 8 is expected to be 45nm SOI(PDSOI&FDSOI).

With that Fab 1 plans to increase capacity by 250% of which is mostly(>50%) for 22FDX.

A Zen3 backport is unlikely do to lack of demand of GloFo's/Samsung's FinFETs. However, if GlobalFoundries is still there. Then, the designs only feasible are the ones GlobalFoundries plans for extended support. Which is only 22FDX in modern nodes. With mature nodes being 28nm and older.

Which largely limits the successors do to GloFo/AMD shared pool of IP/patents/etc to only Stoney/Excavator. The only architectures and successors feasible to stay at GlobalFoundries are the ones that never left GlobalFoundries. GirlFriend doesn't want old discarded jewelry, but rather wants new unused jewelry.

Fam 14h => TSMC-first
Fam 16h => TSMC-first
Fam 17h => GloFo-first w/ TSMC-only in later versions.
Fam 19h => TSMC-first w/o equivalent GloFo node. (TSMC-only in whole)

Zen3 is less likely to move back towards 12nm, but more likely to move forwards to 5nm. As 5nm has the capability to do RTO just as well as 6nm.

Staying on TSMC 7nm and 6nm has automotive-demand caused supply-constraints.
Moving towards GlobalFoundries has no-demand caused supply-constraints.
The only one available for leading edge is 5nm. Which has RTO-available w/ new FinFET structure on 57CPP libs.
 
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Thunder 57

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Aug 19, 2007
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Exactly if I was on the AMD management team. I would promote streamlining the SKUs at this point. To better meet demand for the COVID & Resurgent Crypto mining economies. By eliminating the Ryzen 3000 series cpus that require both a 12nm I/O die from Glo Flo & 7nm Core Die from TSMC. And focus on 7nm APUs for the desktop. That would free up 12nm capacity at Glo Flo for cheap 3400g APUs. While offering higher core count APUs on the AM4 platform. It would open up the possibility for people to actually Build AMD based PC's without needing discrete graphics. The freed up capacity at Glo Flo could also be used to increase discrete 12nm GPU production. To hopefully Allow for affordable GPU options even if they are a bit long in the tooth.

And that is why you are not running things at AMD. So many things are just so wrong with this.
 
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VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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With the current prices of graphics cards. AMD really needs to bring affordable APUs to market. That's were Intel has a uncontested advantage over AMD. They have many more processors featuring integrated graphics. The APUs from AMD are simply not price competitive against their Intel counterparts. Not to mention AMD. Only have 4 core APUs available on the desktop. Where as basically all Intel chips have integrated graphics. It's really too bad they are not cranking out & selling the 3400g at the $85 to $100 price point like the Ryzen 5 1600 AF used to be.
That's a REALLY great point, why isn't AMD using "the great GPU shortage of 2021" to push their APUs for desktop, and grow their APU market share? Seems like a perfect opportunity... IF they're not capacity-constrained, which I guess they kind of are, even at GF.
 

DrMrLordX

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Apr 27, 2000
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AMD specifically stated, as of 2017, that they are not the "budget brand". The OEM desktop APU market is the last thing on their mind. They want to sell server CPUs to ODMs and OEMs more than anything else. You might think their console business contradicts that corporate strategy, but remember that the consoles/semi-custom business saved their bacon in 2015/2016 when they were on the rocks. The OEM APU market did them no favors back then. Yeah they're starting to get more serious about laptop APUs (it seems that Renoir awakened a great demand for that type of product), but desktop APUs? Not so much.

Everybody is capacity-constrained right now. Including Intel, once you realize that they only have a plethora of 14nm capacity due to not as many people wanting CPUs fabbed on that process.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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That's a REALLY great point, why isn't AMD using "the great GPU shortage of 2021" to push their APUs for desktop, and grow their APU market share? Seems like a perfect opportunity... IF they're not capacity-constrained, which I guess they kind of are, even at GF.

The GPU performance in an APU was borderline acceptable back in the Raven Ridge and Picasso days. Renoir barely moved the needle on GPU performance, and (rightly) put the focus on CPU performance. I wouldn't recommend it to a gamer.
 

Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
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That's a REALLY great point, why isn't AMD using "the great GPU shortage of 2021" to push their APUs for desktop, and grow their APU market share? Seems like a perfect opportunity... IF they're not capacity-constrained, which I guess they kind of are, even at GF.

Let me tell you how things are right now... APU are in a huge shortage, this started in 2020 with the 3400G making a dissapearing act before Renoir was a thing. And right now, the 3400G is petty much MIA, the 3200G stock is barely holding on, the 3000G is avalible for a while, then it dissapears, and we are already eating into things consumers shouldnt be able to get to, and that is 2200G PRO / 2400G PRO / 3200G PRO and with some good contacts you can get 4350G PRO / 4650G PRO / 4750G PRO.
Consumer Renoir never launched.
The APU situation is even worse than the 7nm CPUs one. For some weird reason they cant produce enoght Picassos or 3000Gs at 12nm, maybe because the fab is already at capacity produccing 12nm I/O chiplets i dont know.
 
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Shivansps

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Sep 11, 2013
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The GPU performance in an APU was borderline acceptable back in the Raven Ridge and Picasso days. Renoir barely moved the needle on GPU performance, and (rightly) put the focus on CPU performance. I wouldn't recommend it to a gamer.

Renoir APU just destroyed the price/performance in desktop that Picasso had established, but to be fair, they never officially launched so, if the idea was to replace 3200G with 4350G at 10100 price and 3400G with 4650G at 10400 price things would have improved for the better in all aspects, the gpu improvement would have been small, but still an improvement, at those theorical prices.

Now a 4350G at over $160? that destroys everything they did with Picasso.
 

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
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Poorly. It would clock low, draw more power and the die would be very large. Backporting to 12nm would be a significant use of testing and validation resources. And for a gain that will never be realized as demand will die down before such a process would complete.

In the near future 7nm/6nm will be the value product node. I consider AMD will continue evolving Zen 3 on 7nm/6nm for low end products but I doubt they'll backport Zen 4/5 to it.
 

AMDrulZ

Member
Jul 9, 2005
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It makes a great deal of sense with the current state of the global economy. It also simplifies AMDs Product stack and closes a huge hole in AMD's line. Which is the lack of APUs for DIY system builders. It would also simplify the supply chain for AMD & AMDs packaging partners. For example, it would allow the PCB substrate manufacturers to focus on only two substrate designs for desktop CPUs. Not to mention all of the things like boxes & graphic & labeling stickers. It would have a minimal impact on the core count or performance offerings of AMD's desktop CPUs. It's also a viable plan since it uses designs and manufacturing processes that AMD has available. It has nothing to do with AMD not being a budget brand. And everything to do with. Making AMDs CPU offerings more attractive to system builders in today's market.
 

maddogmcgee

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Apr 20, 2015
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They don't need their cpus to be more attractive to home system builders. They are literally selling everything they can make. Every crappy little apu they sell to us for 100 bucks means delays with console shipments or reduced income from selling to the big boys.
 

TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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If AMD has any plans to make new APU models on old nodes they will wait until they know exactly how 11th gen will perform as an APU and also in general, before even starting to put any resources into even planning that move.
Even intel has been operating in this way.