AMD reduces wafer orders due to low demand on servers!

Well, bad news again for the server sector, where AMD is stronger and the main support for both the reds and the blues in this 2023… Or so it was thought. The reality seems to show otherwise, at least according to the information coming from Asia. And it is that an important analyst from China reports that AMD also cuts the tap on servers with a somewhat controversial note that we must analyze specifically. How much reduction of wafer delivery at 5 nm by AMD are we talking specifically?

The information is quite controversial and has two points of view that do not correspond, but as a first key piece of information we have to say that the cut is quite large: it will only order 30,000 wafers. A number that should be the least to play in this quarter… If everything goes back.

AMD forces a supply reduction of wafers to 5nm for server?

First the news, then the clarification and the controversy, in order to clarify it better. According to the report, there is no server demand for EPYC Genoa processors as anticipated by AMD itself.

The analyst on his Weibo account claims to know for sure that the wafers for the Genoa CPU at 5nm are reduced to a total amount of 30,000 wafers for the entire second quarter of 2023… And we haven’t even finished the first one. It’s not that Genoa CPUs don’t interest companies and government services, they are way ahead of Intel’s, but simply that the economic conditions and forecasts of these companies are down and demand falls accordingly.

This is logical after the stampede that we are seeing towards internal protectionism by companies, where spending is being cut to the maximum. As an anecdote and paragraph, Google will now promote the shared desks among its workers to save space in the facilities and not expand, it is reaching that point.

What is the problem with wafers and what is the controversy of this?

Well, unless we are misinformed, the wafers for the server are… The same as for the desktop. That is, the EPYC and Ryzen or Threadripper they use the same wafers, identical, with the distinction of the masks to be engraved by TSMC as well as the different WPH. But what the substrate is is identical for both, there is no distinction and they are distributed as such.

In fact, apart from the different recorded by the different characteristics of the server and desktop processors, which are not many, we only have the I/O Die as a clear differentiating factor, but the rest is almost entirely exportable, as AMD rightly indicated at the time.

Therefore, we understand that what the analyst means is that the orders for wafers for 5nm die etching for the server have been reduced to 30,000 units. What we do not know is how many wafers AMD has ordered for the second quarter recorded for the Ryzen, since, on the contrary, there is an important rumor that affirms that the Threadripper Pro 7000 they are late again.

Perhaps, precisely, because the demand is at historic lows and all the products have to be drained and optimized for sales in 2023. In any case, the controversy is served, because if those 30,000 wafers at 5 nm are for both sectors in instead of for servers only and the analyst is unaware of the null segmentation of the same for them… There are very few wafers, too few…