TSMC this afternoon has disclosed that it will expand its production capacity for mature and specialized nodes by about 50% by 2025. The plan includes building numerous new fabs in Taiwan, Japan, and China. The move will further intensify competition between TSMC and such contract makers of chips as GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC.

When we talk about silicon lithography here at AnandTech, we mostly cover leading-edge nodes used produce advanced CPUs, GPUs, and mobile SoCs, as these are devices that drive progress forward. But there are hundreds of device types that are made on mature or specialized process technologies that are used alongside those sophisticated processors, or power emerging smart devices that have a significant impact on our daily lives and have gained importance in the recent years. The demand for various computing and smart devices in the recent years has exploded by so much that this has provoked a global chip supply crisis, which in turn has impacted automotive, consumer electronics, PC, and numerous adjacent industries.

Modern smartphones, smart home appliances, and PCs already use dozens of chips and sensors, and the number (and complexity) of these chips is only increasing. These parts use more advanced specialty nodes, which is one of the reason why companies like TSMC will have to expand their production capacities of otherwise “old” nodes to meet growing demand in the coming years.

But there is another market that is about to explode: smart cars. Cars already use hundreds of chips, and semiconductor content is growing for vehicles. There are estimates that several years down the road the number of chips per car will be about 1,500 units – and someone will have to make them. Which is why TSMC rivals GlobalFoundries and SMIC have been increasing investments in new capacities in the last couple of years.

TSMC, which has among the largest CapEx budgets in the semiconductor industries (which is challenged only by Samsung) has in recent years been relatively quiet about their mature and specialty node production plans. But at their 2022 TSMC Technology Symposium, the company outlined its plans formally.

The company is investing in four new facilities for mature and specialty nodes:

Fab 23 Phase 1 in Kumamoto, Japan. This semiconductor fabrication facility will make chips using TSMC’s N12, N16, N22, and N28 nodes and will have a production capacity of up to 45,000 300-mm wafer starts per month.
Fab 14 Phase 8 in Tainan, Taiwan.
Fab 22 Phase 2 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Fab 16 Phase 1B in Nanjing, China. TSMC currently makes chips on its N28 in China, though the new phase was once rumored to be capable of making chips using more advanced nodes.

Increasing mature/specialized capacity by 50% over the next three years is a big shift for the company, and one that will improve TSMC’s competitive positions on the market. What is perhaps more important is that the company’s specialty nodes are largely based on its common nodes, which allows at least some companies to re-use IP they once developed for compute or RF for a new application. 

“[Our] specialty technology is quite unique as it is based on common technology platform  [logic technology platform], so our unique strategy is to allow our customer to share or reuse many of the [common] IP,” said Kevin Zhang, senior vice president of business development at TSMC. “For example, you have RF capability, you build that RF on a common logic platform, but later you find ‘hey someone need a so-called ULV feature to support an IoT product application.’ You want to build that on a common platform so you can allow different product lines to be able to share IP across the board, this is very important for our customers so we do want to provide a integrated platform to address the market needs of customer from product perspective.’ 

There are other advantages too. For example, TSMC’s N6RF allows chip designers to combine high-performance logic with RF, which enables them to build products such as modems and other, more unique solutions. Many companies are already familiar with TSMC’s N6 logic node, so now they have an opportunity to add RF connectivity to something that benefits from high performance. GlobalFoundries has a similar approach, but since the U.S.-based foundry does not have anything comparable to TSMC’s N6, TSMC has an indisputable advantage here.

With its common platform approach for mature nodes as well as specialized technologies, and 50% more capacity, TSMC will be able to offer the world more chips for smart and connected devices in the coming years. Furthermore, it will also benefit TSMC by significantly increasing the company’s revenues from mature and specialized nodes, as well as increasing pressure on their rivals.

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As part of AMD’s Financial Analyst Day 2022, it has provided us with a look at the company’s desktop client CPU roadmap as we advance towards 2024. As we already know, AMD’s latest 5 nm chips based on its Ryzen 7000 family are expected to launch in Fall 2022 (later this year), but the big news is that AMD has confirmed their Zen 5 architecture will be coming to client desktops sometime before the end of 2024 as AMD’s “Granite Ridge” chips.

At Computex 2022, during AMD’s Keynote presented by CEO Dr. Lisa Su, AMD unveiled its Zen 4 core architecture using TSMC’s 5 nm process node. Despite not announcing specific SKUs during this event, AMD did unveil some expected performance metrics that we could expect to see with the release of Ryzen 7000 for desktop. This includes 1 MB per core L2 cache, which is double the L2 cache per core with Zen 3, and up to a 15% performance uplight in single-threaded IPC performance. 

AMD 3D V-Cache Coming to Ryzen 7000 and Beyond

One key thing to note with AMD’s updated client CPU roadmap, it highlights some more on what to expect with its Zen 4 core, which is built on TSMC’s 5 nm node. AMD is expecting 8-10% IPC gains over Zen 3, on top of their previously announced clockspeed gains. As a result, the company is expecting single-threaded performance to improve by at least 15%, and by even more for multi-threaded workloads.

Meanwhile AMD’s 3D V-Cache packaging technology will also come to client desktop Zen 4. AMD is holding any further information close to their chest, but their current roadmap makes it clear that we should, at a minimum, expect a successor to the the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

AMD Zen 5 For Client Desktop: Granite Ridge

The updated AMD client CPU roadmap until 2024 also gives us a time frame of when we can expect its next-generation Zen 5 cores. Built on what AMD is terming an “advanced node” (so either 4 nm or 3 nm), Zen 5 for client desktops will be Granite Ridge.

At two years out, AMD isn’t offering any further details than what they’ve said about the overall Zen 5 architecture thus far. So while we know that Zen 5 will involve a significant reworking of AMD’s CPU architecture with a focus on the front end and issue width, AMD isn’t sharing anything about the Granite Ridge family or related platform in particular. So sockets, chipsets, etc are all up in the air.

But for now, AMD’s full focus is on the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 family. Set to launch this fall, 2022 should end on a high note for the company.

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As AMD makes strides in snatching market share with its high-performance x86 processor designs in the server market, it has announced some of its upcoming 4th generations EPYC families expected sometime in 2023. Focusing on its technical computing and database-focused family codenamed Genoa-X, it is the direct successor to AMD’s Milan-X EPYC line-up which launches, later on, this year in Q4. 

Essentially the V-Cache enabled version of AMD’s Genoa EPYC CPUs, Genoa-X will include up to 96 Zen 4 cores and 1GB (or more) of L3 cache per socket. We know that Genoa-X will be using the latest SP5 socket (LGA6096), and will feature twelve memory channels, just like the regular Genoa platform which is set to debut in Q4 2022.

This means that the new SP5 platform will support Genoa, Genoa-X, Bergamo, and Siena, although it is unclear if users upgrading from Genoa to Genoa-X will need a new LGA6096 motherboard or if it will be enabled with a firmware update.

As the successor to Milan-X, Genoa-X is designed to slot into the same user segment, with AMD pitching it at customers who have workloads that uniquely benefit from oversized L3 caches – that is, workloads that can predominantly fit in those caches. That includes technical computing workloads (CAM, etc) as well as databases.

We expect to hear more about Genoa-X and any specific features it will bring to the 4th Gen EPYC platform in the future. AMD Genoa-X is scheduled to be released sometime in 2023.

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