As a part of AMD’s Financial Analyst Day 2020, the corporate gave the most recent updates for its CPU and GPU roadmap. Numerous this we’ve seen earlier than, with the corporate speaking out to Zen four and Genoa on its datacenter CPU product line, out to Zen Three and Ryzen 4000 with the patron product line, and now with the RDNA/CDNA cut up between client and compute graphics. In earlier graphs of an identical nature, AMD used the time period ‘7nm+’ when referring to merchandise past the primary iteration of 7nm. AMD has right this moment clarified to us that this doesn’t imply they’re utilizing TSMC’s N7+ course of node for these objects.
TSMC has three high-level variations of its 7nm course of:
- N7, which is the essential preliminary model utilizing ‘DUV’ solely instruments (so no EUV),
- N7P, which is the second era model of N7 which can also be solely DUV
- N7+, which is an EUV model of N7 for plenty of layers within the steel stack
This nomenclature has been finalized inside the previous yr or so.
Before this, AMD had offered numerous CPU and GPU roadmaps to the general public. For the Zen 2 {hardware}, reminiscent of Ryzen 3000 collection (Matisse), AMD had labeled this as ‘7nm’, which was all broadly interpreted to imply TSMC’s N7 course of. For future merchandise, reminiscent of Zen 3, AMD had the slide listed as ‘7nm+’, which everybody had understood was ‘a better version of 7nm’.
From Next Horizons in July 2019
Because AMD labeled these as 7nm+, when TSMC known as its model of 7nm with EUV to be N7+, one of many apparent assumptions that folks have made is that the place AMD wrote 7nm+, it was to be on the N7+ course of. We have since realized that this isn’t solely right.
In order to keep away from confusion, AMD is dropping the ‘+’ from its roadmaps. In talking with AMD, the corporate confirmed that its subsequent generations of 7nm merchandise are doubtless to make use of course of enhancements and the very best high-performance libraries for the goal market, nevertheless it isn’t explicity stating whether or not this is able to be N7P or N7+, simply that it will likely be ‘better’ than the bottom N7 utilized in its first 7nm line.
This doesn’t essentially imply that AMD isn’t going to be utilizing EUV sooner or later – we have been informed it will likely be on a case by case foundation, and presently they wished to make clear that AMD just isn’t making any particular clarifications of which model of 7nm from TSMC it plans to make use of. More might be detailed at future occasions.
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