AMD may not use the latest manufacturing TSMC has to offer for its upcoming processors and graphics cards, opting for a more tried and tested node. Next-gen Ryzen and Radeon should still get an efficiency and performance boost, but the jump will likely be less significant pursuing trodden grounds.
According to Zhanzhonghao on the Chiphell forum, AMD has selected TSMC’s N3E node for its upcoming Zen 6 CPUs and UDNA GPUs. Zen 6 is expected to power Ryzen 10000 series processors, or whatever the brand decides to name it. It replaces Zen 5 on desktop Ryzen 9000, server Epyc 9005, and mobile Ryzen AI 300. Seeing how Team Red swapped its Radeon naming to match that of Nvidia, we would be surprised by a similar move mirroring Intel’s Core Ultra 200.
Talking of which, the follow-up to Radeon 9000, will mark a shift in the brand’s GPU core design, moving away from RDNA to UDNA on TSMC’s N3E. Like its old GCN-based chips that power Radeon HD 7000 to Vega, AMD is moving back to a unified architecture for both gaming and general computing. Unless artificially locked, gaming Radeon cards should be fairly potent in professional tasks, in a way similar to Nvidia’s CUDA. Additionally, next-gen Radeon is said to offer high-end cards, unlike the 9000 series, bringing back the fight to Nvidia.
Lastly, Zhanzhonghao indicated that the I/O die (IOD) of Ryzen CPUs will finally move from TSMC’s N6 node to the newer N4C, which could give the iGPU a little boost.
The leaker also notes that while the diagram they saw mentioned N3E, it may be outdated, thus AMD could be considering the newer N3P node. Moving from N3E to N3P could bring between 5% and 10% power efficiency, 5% higher performance, or a 1.04x density increase according to TSMC.
While these improvements are unlikely to be possible simultaneously, the efficiency figures alone could make it worth pursuing. That said, manufacturing costs will likely be higher which would impact the final product value and thus become less appealing to users. After all cost per frame has more weight than efficiency when the time comes for an upgrade.
