New industry reports indicate that AMD is working with TSMC to design a 'custom version' of the 5nm node for its 2021 products. This would allow AMD to optimize the fabrication node better for its products, reducing power consumption and maximizing frequencies.

The reality is that Nvidia has been doing that for years which proves to be working really well (Finfets 12nm+ etc). AMD would be looking to do the same for both its processors and graphics cards, seeking to maximize the performance and frequencies of its chips to be as competitive as possible. AMD has been mentioning an 'advanced optimized node' for a while now and everybody expected that to be an enhanced 7nm node. On a recent slider they already confirmed to be focussing that to be 5nm, and now 5nm custom, let's call that 5nm+ for now.

This new optimized process would debut on Zen 4 processors and RDNA3 graphics that will arrive at the end of next year, allowing AMD to be placed in a strong position in both markets. It will be interesting to see the evolution in consumption-performance especially of the graphics thanks to the use of a custom 5nm process. Thus unconfirmed info though, from some industry chatter, as such take it with common sense and some disclaimers, but 5nm might be what AMD is after.

The company is working closely with TSMC for the production of Zen 4 processors at 5nm. AMD has not yet detailed anything about the new Zen 4 architecture. The company did mention it will use techniques for stacking chips for various future products. AMD will combine that with the chiplet technology that is already being used. The stacking of chip orders is called AMD X3D packaging which could be introduced with ZEN4. The first processors with Zen 3 cores will be released this year. They are fabbed on an improved version of TSMC's 7nm process.

AMD is going for customized 5nm at TSMC for ZEN4 and RDNA3?