AMD might turn to Samsung to produce 4nm-based CPUs and GPUs

At the moment, AMD's main foundry is TSMC, but it seems the chipmaker is planning to outsource part of its chip production to another foundry. According to researchers at J. P. Morgan, AMD might turn to Samsung to produce 4nm chips to power Chromebooks. In addition, AMD might also use Samsung foundries for GPUs in the future.

The report shared by @MarcTheShark83 (via Tom's Hardware) tells us that AMD might outsource a 4nm-based Chromebook CPU to Samsung instead of TSMC, with mass-production possibly starting in late 2022. As it seems, the Taiwanese company is limiting its production capacity for Chromebook projects because market demand for these devices is declining.

TSM | JP Morgan research Overweight analysis gives a lot of clues to the other companies’ potential plans.$TSM $AAPL $QCOM $INTC $NVDA $AMD pic.twitter.com/HY7sIDNcIT

— Marc Moeldner (@MarcTheShark83) December 7, 2021

AMD would have to completely redesign its CPU and GPU IP to use Samsung foundries, which might become costly. Considering the Chromebook market is supposedly declining, the decision to move production to a new foundry could possibly bring more loss than profit.

However, the same report also mentions that AMD might turn to Samsung for its GPUs, just like Nvidia currently does. As per the report, AMD will evaluate this decision in 2023/2024, but server, mobile, and desktop processor production during this period (more likely in 2024) should remain at TSMC, probably under the N3 node.

KitGuru says: Given that TSMC is operating at full capacity at the moment, it would make sense for AMD to outsource production for certain chips.

Become a Patron!