Unsatisfactory clock speeds are the cause of AMD delaying launch of its 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X processor, which has nothing to do with support from its foundry partner TSMC, according to sources at motherboard makers.
Despite the delay, AMD's desktop platforms are still expected to continue gaining more market share since Intel has no plan to launch new products in the fourth quarter.
The sources pointed out that many market watchers thought the shortages of some AMD 7nm Ryzen 3000 series processors and the delay of Ryzen 9 3950X from September to November resulted from insufficient TSMC foundry capacity support. But the fact is that these AMD CPUs had lower-than-expected clock speeds, and AMD has been spending time re-designing the BIOS to resolve the issue, the sources said.
Although the volumes of AMD's orders with TSMC are not as large as those from Apple, Huawei and Qualcomm, the CPU vendor is still one of TSMC's key clients with supply priority at the moment, the sources noted.
Currently, TSMC still has sufficient 7nm capacity to handle AMD's orders for Ryzen 3000 series processors, Radeon 5700 series GPUs and second-generation EPYC server processors despite their continuously rising demand, the sources added.
AMD is set to unveil its Zen 3-based Milan server processors manufactured using TSMC's 7nm EUV process and Zen 4-based Genoa using the 5nm process, and is planning to release its RDNA 2-based GPUs using TSMC's 7nm EUV processor as well as Zen 3-based PC CPUs in 2020. The 5nm Zen 4-based PC CPUs are currently in design.
With Samsung Electronics' 7nm EUV process still suffering from weaker-than-expected yield rates, major chip players have been strengthening their partnerships with TSMC including those that had originally sought supply from the Korean maker, some other industry sources indicated.
TSMC's 12nm, 7nm and 7nm EUV process capacity for the second half are all fully loaded, while its first-round of 5nm process capacity that is scheduled to come online in March or April 2020 has already been booked by Apple and Huawei's Hisilicon, the sources added.
Article translated by Joseph Tsai
