Samsung foundry reportedly received 2nm CPU orders from North American customers. Is it AMD?

[ Gearbest Technology News]A recent research report released by South Korea's Dasin Securities shows that Samsung's semiconductor foundry division is expected to have received an order for 2nm notebook CPUs from a North American fabless customer. Although the report did not disclose the specific manufacturer name, relevant speculation generally points to AMD. There have been rumors that AMD is in in-depth discussions with Samsung on the 2nm process, and this order is believed to be related to AMD's next-generation 2nm product line.

Samsung

According to reports, the relevant orders may involve AMD’s Venice and Verano processor product lines planned to be launched from 2026 to 2027. Among them, Venice is expected to adopt the Zen 6C architecture, mainly for high-density computing and data center scenarios; Verano is regarded as a dedicated variant for inference workloads, and is expected to adopt the Zen 7 architecture and serve as the host CPU platform for AMD Instinct MI500 series GPUs.

AMD seeks to cooperate with Samsung mainly due to supply and demand pressure on advanced process production capacity. Currently, TSMC's production capacity at advanced nodes has been booked until 2028. In order to ensure large-scale shipments and product launch rhythm, AMD has every incentive to introduce second-generation foundry suppliers. Previously, AMD CEO Su Zifeng visited Samsung's Pyeongtaek wafer fab to evaluate Samsung's process capabilities.

The current focus of the market is on what role Samsung will play in AMD's 2nm layout. If Samsung only acts as a backup solution, the order size may be limited; if the two parties reach parallel foundry cooperation, the yield and performance of Samsung's 2nm GAA process will become the key factors in determining its share. In addition, the analysis pointed out that AMD may be able to obtain synergies in memory supply and other aspects through cooperation with Samsung, thereby optimizing the cost structure.

For Samsung, if it can successfully win an order of this magnitude from AMD, it will provide an important endorsement for its market competitiveness in the field of advanced processes and help relieve the pressure it faces in terms of yield and performance reputation. At present, neither Samsung nor AMD has officially responded to relevant rumors, and there is still uncertainty about the specific scale of the order and the time for mass production.