Semiconductor manufacturing process technology is a very expensive, capital and resource-intensive game. It’s so capital intensive that it’s the reason why so many semiconductor suppliers have gone to a “fabless” model, designing their chips but having them built at silicon manufacturing partners like TSMC, GlobalFoundries or Samsung. For decades now, Intel has maintained its juggernaut silicon production advantage over its competition by developing its own leading-edge chip fabrication and process technologies. However, now that historic advantage looks like it will actually be a liability, versus an asset for the company, which is something that hasn't occurred in many years, since I can remember, actually.

Earlier in April this year, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su went on record noting the company’s first CPU and GPU silicon, based on cutting-edge 7nm process technology, would start sampling this year for volume ramp in early 2019. Meanwhile, around the same timeframe, Intel went on record noting first silicon from its 10nm process technology would be delayed until 2019. Fast-forward to today and over the weekend, reports came out that TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) was already ramping up 7nm chip manufacturing volume, with not only AMD GPUs in the mix but also 7nm AMD CPUs, specifically AMD’s Zen 2 architecture-based next generation EPYC server processors.

AMD’s EPYC line of many core server processors exploit a key product segment in single socket servers for the data center and enterprise. This is Intel’s bread and butter, cash cow business that, in some cases, AMD can offer strategic advantages in, with a higher core count per socket for better efficiency and higher performance in similar footprints. AMD has already made inroads with EPYC in major server OEMs like Dell-EMC, HP Enterprise and others, and its Zen 2-based EPYC product will only expand on the platform's advantages with even potentially higher core counts, better performance and efficiencies at scale.