It is rumored that AMD used Samsung’s 7nm manufacturing facilities to develop its Radeon RX 5500 graphics card series, which allows them to create their RDNA graphics cards compatible with portable devices without taking wafers from Zen 2 CPU production.
Samsung helped AMD produce AMD RX 5500 graphics cards at 7 nm
This information comes from Fudzilla, although it makes sense given TSMC’s high demand for 7nm silicon. The provision of multiple labs enables AMD to develop more 7nm products, which is essential for AMD to gain market share in the CPU segment.
Today, AMD RX 5500 Series graphics cards are used in new MacBook Pro systems, OEM gaming systems (RX 5500 for OEM only), gaming laptops (RX 5500M) and as stand-alone graphics cards (RX 5500 XT). These graphics cards have enabled AMD to compete in the mid-range GPU market and made AMD a profitable manufacturer of notebook GPUs.
If this is the case, the addition of Samsung’s RX 5500 (Navi 14) chips is an intelligent step by AMD that will enable them to free up TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing capacity for their higher-end Zen 2 processors and Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards. As Samsung hopes to outperform TSMC as the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, it is easy to understand why AMD’s business would also benefit Samsung, especially given Nvidia’s inability to bring 7nm Geforce products to market.
Nvidia does not expect a 7nm graphics card to be launched until the second quarter of 2020, making AMD the only manufacturer of 7nm GPUs for at least another quarter.