Samsung to the rescue for PS5 and Xbox Series X shortages

New reports suggest AMD is looking to outsource some of its GPU production to Samsung to ease its dependence on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is positive news for the Xbox Series X, PS5, and Xbox Series S.

TSMC is presently unable to scale its stock in line with unprecedented consumer demand. There’s no shortage of media coverage around stock issues, especially the Xbox Series X, PS5, and Xbox Series S, which are built around semi-custom AMD SoCs, uniting Zen 2 CPU cores, and RDNA 2 GPUs for the true next-gen experience. 

TSMC is AMD's foundry of choice; indeed, AMD is dependent on TSMC for manufacturing its Radeon GPUs, Ryzen CPU/APU series, and its chips for the next-gen consoles. If TSMC can't cope with demand, console supply is heavily obstructed.  

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The speculative reports come from the Korean tech forum, Clien.net, and have been picked up by the Twitter user, harukaze5719, who suggests that AMD is looking to outsource its lower ASP chipsets to Samsung, avoiding reliance on the TSMC.

To achieve its manufacturing target, which aims to increase its CPU and APU production by around 50%, AMD may turn to Samsung’s upcoming 3nm facilities, rumored to be a multi-billion dollar project to provide a new state of the art manufacturing facility (via Bloomberg). 

Although just rumors at the moment, it remains well within the realms of reason. The industry is well-aware that TSMC is lagging behind in its manufacturing efforts. Samsung may see this as a prime opportunity to capitalize on the stock shortages, lending its production facilities, and giving AMD the extra production capacity it needs.

Of course, Samsung and AMD have already been collaborating on the brand new Samsung Exynos processors that obliterated Apple’s A14 Bionic chip when tested for pure graphics power. Apple’s bulk purchase of the 5nm A14 (SoC) for its iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max, may have catalyzed the TSMC's stock depletion last year. If you're in the market for a new GPU, but feel constantly frustrated with supplies, T3's best graphics card guide should go some way to ease the disappointment of globally depleted stocks.

As demands continue to soar for the new consoles, AMD needs to guarantee extra volume to ensure that the supply line isn't impeded at any stage. If all goes ahead, it could see AMD redistributing a chunk of its CPU and APU creation to Samsung – hopefully, this can trickle down to keep the PS5 and Xbox Series X in constant stock and without further interruption.

Source: TechRadar