AMD is now reportedly making all-American Ryzen 9000 CPU dies at TSMC's Arizona fab
AMD is having some of its latest Ryzen 9000-series desktop CPUs made at TSMC's new fab in Arizona. So claims Taipei, Taiwan-based journalist Tim Cuplan. It was reported last year that AMD was planning on having some high-performance CPUs made at TSMC's Arizona facilities. Now those CPUs have been identified as the latest Ryzen 9000 models and they are said to already be in production.
If true, that's an impressive win for TSMC's new US fab. It was only August last year that AMD released the Ryzen 9000, including the Ryzen 7 9700X, using 4nm silicon for the chip's CPUs made by TSMC's Taiwan factories, aslo known as the TSMC N4 node. So, moving some of that production to the Arizona fab so soon certainly looks like a vote of confidence in the facility.
However, the broader context for this news is quite complicated. TSMC is on record as saying that chips in its Arizona fab cost more to make than equivalent products in is factories in Taiwan. It also says that it plans to charge more for US-made chips as a consequence.
Moreover, AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs are chiplet designs. While it seems AMD is now having some 8-core CPU dies made in Arizona, the package also contain a 6nm I/O die housing the memory controller and other functionality.
That die, as we understand it, is still made in Taiwan. TSMC does have an older fab in Washington state. But that facility at best produces chips on the 16nm node.
Indeed, there are further components in the package and then the package itself to consider. It's not clear where all of the items are produced. So, the mere fact of Ryzen 9000 CPU dies being made in the US wouldn't automatically into an all-American product, even if the CPU cores themselves will have been both designed and manufactured in the USA.
As things standard, TSMC has three new Arizona fabs either already in production or being built. The first, FAB 21-1, produces 4nm chips reportedly including the AMD Ryzen 9000 and Apple's A16 and it already up and running. FAB 21-2 will
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