While Intel has its own chip production center (although it also works with third parties) through Intel Foundry, other manufacturers like AMD, its maximum and only rival currently on the market, rely exclusively on other manufacturers, as is the case with TSMC. This implies that Intel still He’s one step ahead.
This caused a considerable delay for AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series based on Zen 5. According to the latest news related to the manufacturing of this new generation, it will not be until the middle or end of this year that the manufacturer AMD will be able to start mass manufacturing via TSMC.
Different lithographic processes for the Zen 5 and Zen 5c range
According to media outlet UDN, AMD plans to use two different foundry processes for the Zen 5 and Zen 5c processor line. The processor range Zen5 which will be available in the Granite Ridge desktop processor line, the Fire Range laptop processor line and for the EPYC Turin server processors, will be manufactured using a process of 4nm and will have 6 CCDs for a maximum of 192 cores.
If we talk about the processor line Zen 5c at AMD, we have to talk about a 32-core processor, divided into two 16-core CCXs. Each of the two blocks shares an L3 cache of 32 MB, for a total of 64 MB of L3 cache. In order to achieve this high density, AMD will use the node function 3nm.
In addition to all the benefits offered by the 3nm foundry node, one of the reasons AMD will have selected it for the manufacture of Zen 5c is that it allows to increase the clock speed with a higher voltage. low to improve performance. .
Production of this new generation of processors is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2024, but mass production will begin in the third quarter. If we want to wait for this new range of AMD processors to hit the market, we will at least have to wait fourth quarter 2024best case scenario, as long as AMD and TSMC don’t face any supply shortage issues.
Behind Intel
As we mentioned at the start of this article, Intel has its own foundry, so it does not depend exclusively on other manufacturers as is the case with AMD. Intel’s Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake range, which represents the 15th generation of processors from this manufacturer, are expected to be launched on the market in the second quarter of 2024, so, if production has not started, it is about to do so.
When Intel’s Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake hit the market, that will be when AMD begins the process of manufacturing Zen 5 processors. What is clear is that Intel’s advantage over AMD having Intel Foundry is an important advantage that will not change. in the near future.
