Question How well would Zen 3 work on GloFo 12nm?

[Asphodelus]

With the extreme shortages of everything AMD/TSMC 7nm likely to continue for for the foreseeable future, perhaps even the entire generation, how feasible would it be for AMD to pull a Rocket Lake and move Ryzen 3 and lower products over to GloFo 12nm?

 

[LightningZ71]

This is why I keep suggesting that AMD has an easy path to increasing volume greatly. They already have a great design in Renoir/Lucienne. Why not make a "half" Lucienne? One 4 core CCX, 4CUs in the IGPU, 8 total lanes of PCIe enabled (4 for SSD, 4 for other). It'll be roughly half the size of existing Renoir/Lucienne and grant about twice as many chips per wafer. SKUs, 4/8+4, 4/4+4, 2/4+3, 2/2+2. That would clean up in mobile and OEM.

Yields should be good enough for Renoir/Lucienne at this point that selective binning for quad core processors is no longer needed and scavenging can supply the long PRO SKUs. The main question is, us the return worth the investment?

 

[jpiniero]

This is why I keep suggesting that AMD has an easy path to increasing volume greatly. They already have a great design in Renoir/Lucienne. Why not make a "half" Lucienne? One 4 core CCX, 4CUs in the IGPU, 8 total lanes of PCIe enabled (4 for SSD, 4 for other). It'll be roughly half the size of existing Renoir/Lucienne and grant about twice as many chips per wafer. SKUs, 4/8+4, 4/4+4, 2/4+3, 2/2+2. That would clean up in mobile and OEM.

Yields should be good enough for Renoir/Lucienne at this point that selective binning for quad core processors is no longer needed and scavenging can supply the long PRO SKUs. The main question is, us the return worth the investment?

Given they kind of did the same with Dali, I'm sure they will eventually.

 

[Zepp]

This is why I keep suggesting that AMD has an easy path to increasing volume greatly. They already have a great design in Renoir/Lucienne. Why not make a "half" Lucienne? One 4 core CCX, 4CUs in the IGPU, 8 total lanes of PCIe enabled (4 for SSD, 4 for other). It'll be roughly half the size of existing Renoir/Lucienne and grant about twice as many chips per wafer. SKUs, 4/8+4, 4/4+4, 2/4+3, 2/2+2. That would clean up in mobile and OEM.

I kind of expect that they will eventually, just like Dali was essentially halved Raven Ridge die, they will at some point need something more modern than 2 zen1 cores on 14nm for lower end lower power OEM offerings

 

[AMDrulZ]

That's the thing new models aren't necessary they already have the models & designs ready to go. For the 12nm APUs they can simply produce more Ryzen 3 3200g's & Ryzen 5 3400g's they would cover the budget 4 core segment. Then simply release the Ryzen 5 4600g from being an OEM-only part. Which would cover the 6 core segment. Then introduce more Ryzen 7 4700g's to the market to cover the 8 Core segment. All of these models already exist they are just absent or extremely hard to find in the retail market. I recently almost had to purchase an Intel I5 10400 or 10500 for a build because of the current GPU availability & prices they weren't willing to pay the additional cost of a graphics card. The only way I avoided having to build with an Intel part. Was because there happened to be a Radeon RX 560 installed in their old system so we simply reused that in the build. That's when I realized wow there's a massive hole in AMD's product line. Basically, every AMD-powered prebuilt system on the market utilizes an APU. There's absolutely no reason at all for those products to be missing from the retail market.

 

[Asphodelus]

Basically, every AMD-powered prebuilt system on the market utilizes an APU.

Perhaps this is true for office machines, but none of the gamer-grade AMD prebuilts use an APU. All of those use Ryzen 5000 + dGPU.

There's absolutely no reason at all for those products to be missing from the retail market.

Of course there is. It's already been mentioned several times earlier in this thread, but there's absolutely no reason for AMD to sell these cheap, low margin products to the retail market when they could instead be putting that limited supply of 7nm chips towards filling their coffers on expensive Epyc server chips or taking more OEM market share from Intel. That's why you can easily get a Dell with an APU, but you can't buy that same APU by itself.

You have no idea how real world businesses operate, do you?

 

[misuspita]

Even the 3200G is around $200 these days, everything went to hell.

I just bought a 4650g for my passive case build (streacom fp8) at around 190€. Delivery took 7 days, I am still waiting for the MB, a Gigabyte B550i Aorus Pro AX

 

[chrisjames61]

Perhaps this is true for office machines, but none of the gamer-grade AMD prebuilts use an APU. All of those use Ryzen 5000 + dGPU.



Of course there is. It's already been mentioned several times earlier in this thread, but there's absolutely no reason for AMD to sell these cheap, low margin products to the retail market when they could instead be putting that limited supply of 7nm chips towards filling their coffers on expensive Epyc server chips or taking more OEM market share from Intel. That's why you can easily get a Dell with an APU, but you can't buy that same APU by itself.

You have no idea how real world businesses operate, do you?

Your post is spot on. It is obvious that cheap apu's are low on AMD's priority list and for good reason. It is as obvious as the nose on the proverbial face.

 

[LightningZ71]

Just a note, a "half Lucienne" is not an especially "cheap" cpu with respect to utility. The GPU is easily as good as the 32eu Xe iGPU on RKL and quite close to the 48CU G1 i3 tiger lake parts. The Zen2 based 4 Core CCX is also going to be as good as any Comet lake i4 or the i5 tiger lake parts and especially better than the 4C TGL i3.

This half Lucienne would sell solidly in the $400-$700 range of laptops and, given the maturity of the platforms for FP6, it will be cheap to bring out products on it.