AMD to Make High-Performance Chips at TSMC Arizona Next Year
[Exclusive] Latest development means AMD joins Apple as a client of TSMC's Arizona fab. Making HPC chips there helps bring more of the AI supply chain to the US
AMD is lined up to procure high-performance computing chips from TSMC Arizona, making the American fabless chip designer another client for the new US facility, sources tell me.
Production is already in the planning phase, with tape out and manufacturing of AMD’s HPC chips expected to commence at TSMC’s 5nm node next year, I am told. Recall that last month I outlined the schedule for Apple to become the first customer for TSMC in Arizona with production of the iPhone maker’s A16 SoC already being underway.
The latest information I received on the Apple project indicates shipments of the A16 could come before the end of this year, a symbolic move which would allow TSMC to ship ahead of the “early 2025” schedule. TSMC is in talks with a number of clients to tape out products in Arizona next year. AMD is likely to be next, making it the second customer, but it is possible another chip designer will land there first.
TSMC folks declined to comment today, in line with the company’s policy not to talk about customers or products.
Note that 5nm, aka N5, is a marketing term for a family of technology nodes which include N5, N5P, N4, N4P and N4X. These flavours are different, but not enough for you to trip up on the details. AMD’s new chip is likely to be done at an N4-flavoured node.
News of AMD making HPC chips in Arizona is, in my estimate, even more of a BFD than Apple’s A16 SoC getting fabbed there. It means that the US is moving closer to having an AI-hardware supply chain operate entirely on American soil. A few weeks ago I reported that Nvidia’s Blackwell is back on track, with GB200 servers shipping in December from Taiwan. Server production will ramp up in the US early to mid next year.
An important step in the process of building an American AI supply chain came last week from Arizona and is related to AMD’s Made in the USA move. TSMC and Amkor announced they’d collaborate on advanced packaging, including both Integrated Fan-Out (InFO) and Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS).
The two have been long-term partners but eagle-eyed observers will note the importance of CoWoS being part of the pact: the technology is patented and the term is a registered trademark of TSMC. That’s a massive step for Amkor, but also a good development for TSMC.
InFO is a wafer-level packaging technology that allows chips to be packaged more closely together and is already advanced in its own right. But CoWoS, TSMC’s latest packaging approach, is crucial to allowing high-bandwidth memory to be connected efficiently with GPU cores.
This technology is in high demand — there’s currently a capacity shortage — and is fundamental to the higher performance we now see from AI chips designed by Nvidia and AMD. Apple’s iPhone processors, by contrast, can do just fine with InFO (for now). If you want to geek out on packaging minutiae, head over to SemiAnalysis.
At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, wafers of US-made chips for both Apple and AMD are likely to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging. But when Amkor’s new Arizona facility gets up and running it will theoretically be able to do that work locally. Amkor last November announced plans for a $2 billion plant, with production to commence “within the next two to three years.” Amkor said Apple will be the first and largest client of the new factory. That timeline seems a little murky now, with a July statement putting it at “within three years.”
That’s all I have for now.
Thanks for reading.
Media: please cite as “independent journalist Tim Culpan” with link. (No link is a no-no). LInfluencers, you can skip. Thanks
To learn about the split-up, struggles and rebirth of AMD I recommend you read Part I of my investigative piece published last week. It’s quite an unbelievable tale. Part II of that report is on the way. Subscribe to ensure you don’t miss it.
Hi Tim, would you be open to doing a guest post with us?
If you want you could also write about AMD's new chip for us: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/10/amd-launches-mi325x-ai-chip-to-rival-nvidias-blackwell-.html