More leaks have emerged from the Chinese Chiphell forums, with resident leaker ‘zhangzhonghao’ providing more insights on what AMD will do next. For starters, all of its silicon will feature newer process nodes from TSMC, and the chipmaker is also looking to expand its 3D stacking technology to other product lines.
TSMC N3E To Power AMD’s Next Gen Chips
In the leaker’s words (translated):
Desktop Zen 6 CCD will be on TSMC N3E process, IOD will be on TSMC N4C.
As for GPUs, UDNA will be the same N3E node. ‘Big-core’ flagships will return, as Dr. Lisa Su (CEO of AMD) mentioned.
For APUs, the next-gen ‘Halo’ class chips will use 3D V-Cache to both improve CPU and GPU performance, we’ll need to wait until latter half of this year to know which packaging technology will be used – currently the best way to describe it is ‘shared’.
For consoles, Sony will do 3D V-Cache as well, while it’s unclear over at Microsoft (Xbox) at this moment.
For reference, AMD’s Zen 5 cores currently employs N4P/N4X nodes, which are both part of the 5nm-class nodes from TSMC. N3E will be part of the 3nm-class family, which means it should bring more upgrades over the enhanced 5nm nodes marketed as ‘4nm’. That said, AMD’s smaller Zen 5c core have been reportedly using the N3E process, but there are no official sources confirming this.
As a side note, the new I/O die jumping from N6 to N4C (the more cost-effective version of N4P) should bring new capabilities, as there were no upgrades made when the chipmaker introduced Zen 5 desktop CPUs, which carries over the same IOD used in Ryzen 7000 processors. UDNA, meanwhile, will be the new name to supersede RDNA4, as the chipmaker will once reunite its consumer and datacenter GPUs into one unified architecture since Vega (hence the ‘U’ in UDNA).
The more interesting part lies on the purported expansion of 3D V-Cache technology on more designs – the leaker alleges that flagship laptop APUs (which will be the successor of Strix Halo aka Ryzen AI Max 300 series) will be employing the same tech that gives Ryzen desktop chips a massive boost in gaming performance, and same goes to the chip that will power Sony’s next-gen console.
In any case, it looks like AMD has big plans ahead for 2026, and with Intel yet to have any answers for 3D V-Cache, Team Red’s conquest for the CPU market dominance looks to be on track at the moment.
Pokdepinion: Big plans ahead, hopefully AMD keeps the upgrades coming.
