The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming that Intel’s next two CPU generations could make life nastier for AMD by hogging more of TSMC’s tight 2nm capacity.
According to Jukan, Chipzilla is reportedly planning to use TSMC for parts of its Nova Lake and Razor Lake processor families. That will not cheer AMD, which already has to fight for space inside TSMC’s increasingly rammed fabs.
Intel is expected to start mass production of Nova Lake around January 2027. The chips were once expected to rely on Chipzilla’s own 18A process, but recent leaks now suggest a split between 18A and TSMC’s N2P.
Commercial Times has added that laptop Nova Lake parts might not arrive until the Razor Lake-HX generation. That would leave the desktop chips to carry the early Nova Lake flag while mobile buyers wait.
Nova Lake is expected to introduce bLLC, or Big Last-Level Cache, which is aimed squarely at AMD’s X3D chips. Reports claim the top 52-core models could carry up to 288MB of cache, while 28-core variants may get 144MB.
Razor Lake is reportedly heading down the same path, splitting production between Chipzilla’s own process and TSMC’s N2X. That node is a high-performance version of TSMC’s N2 platform aimed at fast CPUs, AI and HPC.
The move from FinFET to nanosheet technology is expected to make N2X more attractive for high-frequency designs. It will also make the node even more attractive to every other outfit trying to squeeze into TSMC’s queue.
That is where AMD’s headache begins. If Chipzilla books more marginal 2nm capacity, AMD has less room to manoeuvre at the same foundry it relies on for its best silicon.
The leaks suggest 18A may still not be ready to carry the whole load. For a company that keeps telling the world its foundry comeback is on track, leaning on TSMC for two generations is not a victory lap.
A supposed Core Ultra 9 4950K engineering sample from the Nova Lake-S family has already been spotted. The chip is expected to use 28 cores, comprising eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and four low-power E-cores, with about 1,000 points in CPU-Z single-core and about 20,000 points in multi-core.