AMD at its Financial Analyst Day 2020 presentation made a significant clarification about its silicon fabrication course of. It was beforehand believed that the corporate’s upcoming “Zen 3” CPU microarchitecture and RDNA2 graphics architectures had been primarily based on TSMC’s N7+ (7 nm EUV) silicon fabrication course of as a result of AMD would mark the 2 as “7 nm+” in its advertising and marketing slides. Throughout its Financial Analyst Day presentation, nonetheless, AMD prevented utilizing that marker, and resorted to an amorphous “7 nm” marker, prompting one of many monetary analysts to hunt a clarification. At the time, AMD responded that they had been aligning their advertising and marketing with that of TSMC, and therefore selected to make use of “7 nm” in its new slides.
It seems that the subsequent step to TSMC N7, the corporate’s current-generation 7 nm DUV silicon fabrication node, is not N7+ (7 nm EUV), however somewhat it has a nodelet alongside the way in which, which the foundry refers to as N7P. This is a generational refinement of N7, however doesn’t use EUV lithography, which implies it could not provide the 15-20 p.c good points in transistor densities supplied by N7+ over N7. AMD clarified that “7 nm+” in its previous displays didn’t intend to indicate N7+, and that the “+” merely denoted an enchancment over N7. At the identical time, it will not specify whether or not “Zen 3” and RDNA2 are primarily based on N7P or N7+, so the corporate does not rule out N7+, both. We’ll in all probability study extra as we close to the late-2020 launch of “Zen 3” as EPYC “Milan.”
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