AMD Zen 5 CPUs could be delayed to 2024-2025 due to TSMC’s priority allocation of 3nm node to Intel and Apple

It seems that AMD’s Zen 5 CPUs could face a possible delay whether the company plans to use TSMC’s next-generation 3nm process.

The report indicates that TSMC’s 3nm node has been prioritized for two big companies, Intel and Apple, who have invested heavily in acquiring the next-generation node and are marked as VIP client for this.

There are also other customers including AMD, NVIDIA and MediaTek hoping to gain access to the 3nm node.but they aren’t expected to start until the end of 2023, meaning production of the next-generation products based on that process will arrive around 2024 or 2025.

AMD, NVIDIA and MediaTek also hope to gain access to the 3nm node

With this move by Intel and Apple we cannot say for sure if AMD will use TSMC’s 3nm node for its Zen 5 based processors. We know that Zen 4 will use TSMC’s 5nm process node which NVIDIA will also use for its upcoming graphics cards. According to this report, there are three possible options for AMD. One is that they have to wait until 2024-2025 to produce their Zen 5 CPUs. This will delay things by 2 years considering Zen 3 was released in late 2020 and will be replaced in late 2022. The most likely scenario is that AMD will delay Zen 5 release in late 2024 or early 2025.

The other two options are for AMD to take advantage of their N5P node, which is a highly optimized version of the N5 node. and a better version compared to the 4N node that NVIDIA uses. But since Zen 5 is going to be a new architecture revision, it doesn’t make sense to have it on node N3. The most unlikely scenario is that AMD manages to negotiate with TSMC for a spot on the 3nm node, but since there are two big players already fighting for N3 wafers, AMD would end up with a limited supply.

AMD take advantage of its N5P node, which is a highly optimized version of the N5 node

The first case seems more possible since AMD may do an interim release of Zen 4 with V-Cache that could last a year and be very competitive against Intel’s gaming CPU options until they release Zen 5. So 2022 would be vanilla Zen 4 followed by Zen 4 with V-Cache in 2023 and then a Zen 5 release in late 2024. Now , this is all a rumor for now and should be treated as such, but we definitely want to see Zen 5 in action and get it sooner rather than later.

Source: Digitimes