TSMC’s 3D technical supply and manufacturing issues may cause limited availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and the lack of 3D variants for the 5900X and 5950X also cannot be explained

While AMD has a reason to release the Ryzen 7 5800X3D as the only 3D V-Cache option for core eight-core gamers, it appears that the real reason for having new technology exclusive to just one processor may have to do with TSMC’s 3D sourcing and manufacturing capabilities.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the only 3D V-Cache CPU, may have limited supply due to manufacturing and supply issues at TSMC

Now you must be asking why the Ryzen 7 5800X, 7nm chip with 3D V-Cache is so hard to manufacture? Well, manufacturing a 7nm chip is not that difficult now that TSMC has years of experience and the 7nm node has some really high returns. The main issue here is the addition of 3D V-Cache which uses TSMC’s brand new 3D technology.

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According to DigiTimes (via PCGamer), the TSMC 3D SoIC technology is still in its infancy and has not yet reached mass production. Furthermore, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D isn’t the only 3D V-Cache CPU out there. You might remember the AMD EPYC Milan-X lineup that was announced a few months ago? Well, yes, this is also based on 3D V-Cache and not just a single stack but several stacks. Whereas a single AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D uses a single 64MB SRAM stack, a Milan-X chip like the EPYC 7773X uses eight 64MB stacks for a total of 512MB of L3 cache. Considering the significant performance advantages of additional cache in enterprise workloads, these chips are in great demand in the respective sector.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is the first and only Ryzen CPU with 3D V-Cache technology.

As such, AMD decided to prioritize its Milan-X chips over Ryzen 3D chips, and thus, we only got one Vermeer-X chip in the entire batch. AMD showed off the Ryzen 9 5900X3D prototype last year but that’s out of the equation for now. The prototype shown by AMD features 3D stacking on a single stack and this also raises the question if AMD just enabled the Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X with a single 3D stacked CCD, would that work, and what the latency and potential performance of those would look like. AMD showed similar performance gains to the 12-core prototype running a single die-stack but I think the size should really be limited if these chips don’t make their way into final production.

But there is hope as TSMC builds a brand new advanced packaging facility in Chunan, Taiwan. The new plant is expected to be operational by the end of this year, so we can expect improved supply and production volume for TSMC’s 3D SoIC technology and hopefully see future iterations of Zen 4 with the same packaging technology.

Expected Features of AMD Ryzen ‘Zen 3D’ Desktop CPU:

• Slight improvement on TSMC’s 7nm process node
• Up to 64 MB of stack cache per CCD (96 MB L3 per CCD)
• Up to 15% average performance improvement in games
• Compatible with existing AM4 platforms and motherboards
• Same TDP as current consumer Ryzen CPUs

AMD has promised up to 15% better performance in games than its current lineup, and having the new CPU compatible on the existing AM4 platform means users running older chips can upgrade without the hassle of upgrading their entire platform. AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is expected to be released in the spring of this year.

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