An EE Times report shows an interesting quote from GlobalFoundries chief technologist Gary Patton, which offers an interesting perspective on the future of AMD. The smelter will be responsible for manufacturing the first AMD chips at 7 nm this year, although it will not be the only one, as the Sunnyvale smelter will also be using TSMC.
TSMC could also manufacture the Ryzen at 7 nm with GlobalFoundries
Therefore, it is possible that Ryzen AMD processors at 7 nm are manufactured by both GlobalFoundries and TSMC, creating a situation where one smelter could produce better CPUs than the other. One of them could produce chips with higher clock speeds than the other, adding another layer to the silicon lottery. AMD created its Vega 7nm silicon in TSMC’s 7nm process, so it is more likely to use TSMC to make its GPUs and GlobalFoundries in the CPU section.
AMD would only create the same product in the manufacturing process of TSMC and GlobalFoundries if they had no other choice. Using TSMC’s facilities to build GPUs will significantly reduce GlobalFoundries’ workload, so there is no reason to believe that the 7nm Zen processors will come from both factories.
AMD has already confirmed that they will have samples of their Zen 2 da 7nm processors by the end of this year, so it is likely that the company plans to launch its new architecture in early 2019, just at the same time as the two previous generations have arrived.