According to HotHardware, Samsung is set to produce of 14nm chips for AMD, starting next year. This news comes as a bit of a surprise. AMD currently produces all its chips through one company, namely GlobalFoundries. In a nutshell, AMD now keeps all of their chip production with one single company – not a good business model in any situation. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) also used to build chips for AMD. But after yield and supply woes were constantly happening, it forced AMD to look elsewhere for help, and right now it’s looking in the direction of Samsung.
The idea is to have at least two semiconductor facilities producing chips for AMD. Right now, with only one production company and the possible problems arising from such an arrangement, AMD is hard pressed to find another company that is able to produce chips for their new lineup alongside high yield and perfectly executed supply chain as well. It is important for AMD for their two new chips, namely “Greenland” GPUs and “Zen” CPUs that are coming out soon, to be produced as efficiently, quickly and without hassle.
AMD currently has all its chips in one basket, so to speak, that basket being GlobalFoundries. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) also used to build chips for AMD, though yield and supply woes forced AMD to look elsewhere for help, and right now it’s looking in the direction of Samsung. Both new chips will ba made as 14nm semiconductors, including all the production woes that come with this production configuration as well.
AMD is currently behind Intel in CPU production and sales. Giving that AMD is switching to a smaller manufacturing process, the company could once again be in a better position to fight with their rivals. The potential of new AMD GPU’s is exciting. We’ll see how it will develop and what kind of success will AMD have. Next generation parts should be significantly more power efficient and faster than AMD’s current offerings. The new GPU’s are rumored to sport second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Exciting times for the chip maker, that’s for sure.
