AMD Polaris 30 dies are made by GlobalFoundries and Samsung

It turns out that AMD is using two foundries for its 12nm Polaris 30 GPU. TechPowerUp received confirmation from the company that it's using both GlobalFoundries and Samsung. At this point, it's unknown if there's a noticeable difference between both versions of Polaris 30. AMD did not provide details on how to identify the dies that are made by GlobalFoundries or Samsung. Both dies are packaged in China, so the national-origin marking offers no clue.

For it's next-gen GPUs, AMD will use TSMC's 7nm process but this dual-foundry strategy news opens up the possibility that AMD may also use Samsung's 7nm node for some chips. With GlobalFoundries out of the cutting-edge manufacturing race, Samsung is the only other foundry capable of delivering this:

AMD confirmed that its first 7 nm chips could be sourced from TSMC, but even it realizes that TSMC has an exhaustive list of clientele for 7 nm, each with its own foundry allocation. AMD could try to find additional sources for 7 nm chips, and we predict Samsung to be one of them. GloFo canned its 7 nm plans, and AMD is keeping it busy with wafer contracts for "Zen," "Zen+," "Polaris," "Vega 10" GPU die, and the 14 nm I/O controller die at the heart of its EPYC "Rome" MCM.