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A pair of new rumors effectually AMD have popped upward in recent days, both with significant implications for the time to come of the company. AMD has been in the headlines already this calendar week for launching its new R9 Nano GPU and reorganizing its entire graphics partitioning. Nano has had skilful reviews and promoting Raja Koduri to head AMD's entire graphics division is, in our opinion, a smashing determination. Unfortunately, the CPU side of the business might not be and then rosy.

According to DigiTimes, AMD's new Zen CPUs will send in Q4 2022 "at the earliest" due to problems with GlobalFoundries yield and ramp-up rates of their 14nm process. On the one hand, "DigiTimes" is not a synonym for "accuracy" in any lexicon with which we're familiar. On the other, however, we know that GlobalFoundries has always struggled with cutting-edge nodes. Relations between AMD and its former manufacturing division were downright frosty past the time Llano launched, and while the situation has improved since then, AMD has never moved its graphics card production to GF, despite having agreed to practice so when its manufacturing arm became an independent visitor. Last twelvemonth, GlobalFoundries appear that information technology was canceling its own 14nnm engineering science (14XM) and would instead license Samsung'due south 14LPE and 14LPP.

Nosotros reached out to GlobalFoundries on this topic and were told that while the company can't comment on whatever customer'south products or roadmap, it could requite us a general update on the state of 14nm engineering. Co-ordinate to a GlobalFoundries spokesperson, 14nm LPE is already qualified and on its style to volume production, having met yield targets on "atomic number 82 customer targets." The 2nd-generation 14nm node, 14LPE, is expected to qualify in the back half of this yr and begin volume ramping in early 2022.

One thing GlobalFoundries did tell us, yet, is that "we no longer offering 14XM." AMD, meanwhile, showed this slide at its Annotator Day final May:

AMD-Invest

Slide from AMD Analyst 24-hour interval

There's some wiggle room in "customized process technology," but not that much. It implies that while AMD might exist willing to pay GF to brand some modifications to an existing Samsung node in society to optimize it for Zen'southward target ability and frequency envelopes, it'southward not going to deploy specialized technologies like SOI. Assuming that AMD hasn't shifted its manufacturing to TSMC (and while nosotros've seen this happen earlier, there'south no evidence of it currently), it means Zen will be the starting time high-power scrap congenital on a Samsung process technology. Information technology doesn't strain credulity to think that AMD and GF might take hit some snags in this process — though, as we've said, anything DigiTimes prints must be taken with a heaping scattering of table salt.

The impact of delay

The good news for AMD is that a Zen slip wouldn't really harm the company'south competitive position. Intel has already stated that it won't move to 10nm until 2022, and the Kaby Lake refresh isn't likely to dramatically change Skylake'southward performance characteristics. Even Cannonlake, when it debuts, volition focus on power consumption. Intel'southward "ticks" typically simply improve performance by ane-3%. If Zen hits its 40% IPC improvement, the impact of a delay confronting what Intel would be doing in the market at the same time would be fairly minimal.

Carrizo-1

The FX-8700P'south measured GPU operation. Bang-up for a 15W processor

The bad news of such a delay, however, would mean that AMD would exist stuck with its aforementioned APU complement for another full yr. I haven't however had the chance to play with Carrizo, though the early reviews are positive as far as operation and power efficiency and generally on-par with lower-end Broadwell-based Core i3's. Whether or not these results are enough to win AMD fresh designs is a very open question, and its Q2 performance didn't exactly inspire performance in the future of Bulldozer-derived APUs. AMD might not be competitively injured by a six-calendar month filibuster, merely it badly needs the acquirement new products could bring.

While AMD does expect to brainstorm recognizing additional acquirement from new semi-custom wins in 2022, Lisa Su has previously said that this revenue would be betwixt $250 – $300M for the lifetime of each product. Assuming a five-twelvemonth lifespan for each and the maximum estimated value, that'southward however just $30 1000000 in acquirement per quarter from the new semi-custom wins. That's a great rest income, only it tin't supervene upon the value of lost CPU marketplace share. Even if it'southward truthful that AMD captured the Nintendo NX, it won't offset seeing acquirement from that business concern until the finish of 2022 at the primeval.

Some other day, another buyout rumor

Meanwhile, in other, other news, Fudzilla is reporting that Microsoft is still nosing around AMD. Given that the same site reported that Silver Lake Partners bought xx% of AMD merely a few days ago, information technology'southward well-nigh comical to see this kind of rumor circulating. That's not to say that Microsoft couldn't make its own investment, but information technology shows how fragmented the rumor mill tin be. At the aforementioned time, however, it makes a certain amount of sense. Earlier this year, we reported that Lisa Su had met with investment firms to hash out possible options for AMD, including restructuring or spinning off parts of the company. The recent GPU restructuring might or might not exist part of a deal,

At this betoken, nosotros recommend taking all buyout / investment rumors as fan theorizing as opposed to established fact.