Yeah. Don't see any reason why AMD would skip N3P or N3X.
Agree. I think the majority of the disagreement is on what parts will get N2. Everyone agrees that Zen 6c Venice will get N2. I wouldn't be surprised if Zen 6 full Venice gets it as well. The rest? Debatable, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
Wouldn't N2 be severely capacity constrained?
Yes, but I think it depends on what orders exist at what time. While others here seem to think that TSMC can just turn on N2 and supply 1/3rd of the entire market over night, I tend to agree with your assessment that AMD will supply lots more chips on N3P than they do on N2.
Only the top tier parts have it. The bulk of mass production is on n3 class nodes. All they need to produce is diy desktop and server. They're also the first and only customer initially.
I don't completely disagree with you. I am wondering what the cost of bringing a 12c CCD to both N2 and N3P costs. If it isn't that bad, and AMD can easily mix and match without significantly high cost and timing, then there is no reason we wont see a mix of the same CCD's produced on different nodes for different markets. Of course, this is making the BIG assumption that a 12c N2 CCD would outperform (out clock) a 12c N3P CCD. That may not be the case.
I have zero doubt that N2 will provide much better PPA which is super critical in DC. In high performance desktop, my opinion is that it is much more important to get a few cores to top clock speeds.
Laptop is a different story.
But pricing might depend on what performance Intel can get out of the big last level cache variants.
I totally agree that pricing AND performance will likely be dependent on what Intel can bring to bear for competition.
It's bittersweet because obviously most of us wish they weren't THAT successful
With great success comes exorbitant prices!
100% agree.
It is true that AMD have been raising their profit margins by a combination of their HUGE increase in DC market .... and much of it at the high end (although the new low end EPYC's look to squash the low end DC also) and the high end DIY parts.
From a near term profit standpoint, this makes sense; however, at the end of the day volume is very important. Being able to make larger orders gives AMD more leverage in pricing. Larger volume lets AMD amortize their dev costs over more units, higher revenue lets AMD invest more in future designs, etc, etc.
Many a company in the past has gone by the wayside by ignoring volume. AMD doesn't appear poised to repeat this mistake.
This is why I suspect there will be lots more production of Zen 6 on N3P than many in this forum believe.