AMD in talks with Samsung to resolve chip shortages: rumour

[watercooled]

Amusing to read this after those rumours that Ampere launching on Samsung's 8nm was only a stopgap and the plan was to move to TSMC in 2021.

That only makes sense if capacity is due to be freed up at TSMC though, as the likes of AMD will already have production contracts in place with TSMC.

It's like all the media hysteria over the automotive chips and the implication this will eat capacity from everyone else. For the automotive processors that are actually made on cutting-edge nodes (most aren't, and some are even on 200mm wafers on much older nodes) the volumes really aren't that significant in the grand scheme of things from what I understand. You know what the Internet is like, a few grains of a rumour, make the rest up and run with it...

[lumireleon]

....ohhh wait! Samsung is designing Exynos GPUs using Radeon tech maybe that's were AMD will get a cut on chip transfer coz Samsung engineers will 'simply' help AMD port some chips to Samsung 8nm and 'forward port' to 5nm. ALSO Diplomatic tensions concerning China and Taiwan, better have a leg in South Korea just in case.

[maxopus]

Considering AMD's chiplet design it makes perfect sense for them to get CPU & GPU chiplets from multiple sources and bin them according to how they perform.

[QuorTek]

Samsung would be more keen and willing to work with AMD than Nvidia for one reason, the entire console market, Nvidia has no hold on that.

[kalniel]

Samsung would be more keen and willing to work with AMD than Nvidia for one reason, the entire console market, Nvidia has no hold on that.

Hasn't the Switch sold over 70 million units?

[kompukare]

Hasn't the Switch sold over 70 million units?

It's all rather ironic, isn't it?

After Nvidia claimed (or spread a 'sources close to...' story) that the margins for consoles were too thin (implying AMD were desperate, which they were, but then Nvidia burnt a lot of bridges with their previous behaviour with Microsoft and Sony), they then went for the console with probably the lowest margins and certainly the least likely to influence game developers to use certain GPU features.

[Yoyoyo69]

Hasn't the Switch sold over 70 million units?

It's all rather ironic, isn't it?

After Nvidia claimed (or spread a 'sources close to...' story) that the margins for consoles were too thin (implying AMD were desperate, which they were, but then Nvidia burnt a lot of bridges with their previous behaviour with Microsoft and Sony), they then went for the console with probably the lowest margins and certainly the least likely to influence game developers to use certain GPU features.

Yep. They were very arrogant and full of themselves. When they saw AMD gaining so much control progress, then realising nobody wanted their chips. They were desperate to get Nintendo signed up, huge discounts, but they'll never admit it publicly.

Huge faceplate

[lumireleon]

INTERESTING PANIC that when Jensen was launching RTX 3000 series he mentioned " the RTX 3080 has raytracing effects like the upcoming Playstation 5". If you clearly think your products are superior and due to the valuation of your company on the stock exchange why feel threatened by the under-dog? 3060ti and 3060 12 gb is a clear indicator Nvidia never expected AMD to come up fast. Microsoft/Apple/Sony/Samsung are clearly working with AMD and that is pressure.

PlayStation 4- 115 million units
Xbox One- 51 million units

[iEimis]

Yeah doubt this will actually happen, how will you port a FAB design especially when one is 8nm and the other is 7

[watercooled]

You're making the assumption that they would be porting the same design to another node, which may not be the case. And even than, Intel have backported Sunny Cove from 10nm to 14nm for Rocket lake - it is possible if the need arises.

[idasbot]

I thought Samsung can't do 7nm just 8

[DanceswithUnix]

I imagine Sony would be happy to port to Samsung's next gen (6nm or whatever) if it helps yields. After all, they have a static performance target, and after that it's just how much the die costs and how hard it is to cool.

Moving some Sony chippery to Samsung might free up some wafers for AMD's own chips.

[watercooled]

I thought Samsung can't do 7nm just 8

Samsung do lots of nodes including 7nm. As for why Nvidia used 8nm instead, it could have been down to cost, yield, characteristics, capacity - any number of reasons. If I remember correctly, Samsung's 7nm is exclusively EUV, so it could also be down to capacity of their EUV scanners.

I imagine Sony would be happy to port to Samsung's next gen (6nm or whatever) if it helps yields. After all, they have a static performance target, and after that it's just how much the die costs and how hard it is to cool.

Moving some Sony chippery to Samsung might free up some wafers for AMD's own chips.

Yeah, consoles are an interesting thought - and they are currently craving more wafers, but they'd have to weigh that against eating into profit margins for products they currently sell at a loss anyway, and whether it would be worthwhile in the long run given how console chip demand starts extremely high then tapers off.

[kompukare]

Samsung do lots of nodes including 7nm. As for why Nvidia used 8nm instead, it could have been down to cost, yield, characteristics, capacity - any number of reasons. If I remember correctly, Samsung's 7nm is exclusively EUV, so it could also be down to capacity of their EUV scanners.

Yeah, consoles are an interesting thought - and they are currently craving more wafers, but they'd have to weigh that against eating into profit margins for products they currently sell at a loss anyway, and whether it would be worthwhile in the long run given how console chip demand starts extremely high then tapers off.

The loss on consoles is anyways a bit strange.

Obviously we don't know the details, but the assumption has always been and is stronger this gen that Sony and Microsoft basically fund a lot of AMD's R&D especially for GPUs. I believe the current loss of $50, $100, $150 per console doesn't take that upfront loss into account
.
What is more important is to get the marketshare.Sony seem to have been doing well there since they have the weaker console by quite a bit, yet have outsold Microsoft.

If the first few years of a console generation is all about numbers, then the cost of porting / redesigning the chips to fab with Samsung (which might easily run into $100+ million) might make a lot of sense. Now, whether AMD have any spare engineering capacity to embark on porting the design in time is another question. Probably not.

[DanceswithUnix]

Yeah, consoles are an interesting thought - and they are currently craving more wafers, but they'd have to weigh that against eating into profit margins for products they currently sell at a loss anyway, and whether it would be worthwhile in the long run given how console chip demand starts extremely high then tapers off.

Which is why I was wondering if they would be buying into a newer process.

Consoles usually start off selling at a loss, but after a few shrinks it gets easier to hit clock targets as well as getting more chips per wafer and they get easier to cool. So if, by the time a chip has taped out for Samsung's design rules and a few test chips come back, they are months down the line it might be that a newer process is what they are targeting.

Probably not improved enough for a PS5 slim yet, but might help.

[BiggusDickus]

"Samsung cannot meet what nvidia need for supply, so how are they going to manage with amd as well"

This 100% sums this story up.