AMD Zen and K12 believed to be taped out

Posted on Monday, October 19 2015 @ 11:23 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
AMD logo
DresdenBoy did some digging on LinkedIn and spotted a profile from an AMD employee that reveals both the Zen and K12 designs have been taped out:
Interestingly the same guy (you have to find him yourself, if you need to), who only talks about CPU cores, mentions his working on 16nm and 14nm FinFet designs. So there will be one design made by TSMC and one by Globalfoundries. K12 by the first and Zen by the latter I suppose.
AMD LinkedIn profile

Unfortunately, AMD's management didn't provide an update about K12 nor Zen during last week's third-quarter earnings call. CEO Lisa Su did confirm that AMD taped out multiple products to multiple fabs at a FinFET process, this information seems to confirm rumors that AMD will be using both 16nm and 14nm FinFET:
Lisa T. Su - President and CEO
So Harlan let me [indiscernible] it this way. As we stated in the Financial Analyst Day we had a target of 40% IPC performance of Zen over our previous generation. We believe we’re on track for that. Relative to process technology we've tapped out multiple products to multiple fabs in FinFET, and we believe that they are also on track in terms of overall ramp. So we continue to focus on both of those aspects, both the architecture of the process technology but so far so good.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments