Where are the Zen 3+ laptops?

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https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-ryzen-zen-3-plus…

While it doesn’t bring us into the next generation of chips just yet, the new AMD tech sounds pretty impressive. However, for some reason, the adoption of Zen 3+ technology in laptops has been really slow so far.

ComputerBase reported that only 11 notebooks currently utilize the new AMD mobile offerings. Four months after the launch, that’s less than we’d expect. Asus has been the number one manufacturer to adopt Zen 3+ processors into its laptops, with eight new systems, while Lenovo, Razer, and Alienware only have one each. Strangely enough, not a single manufacturer has picked up the power-efficient AMD 6000U series just yet.

AMD itself hasn’t commented on why exactly its new Zen 3+ mobile CPUs are so difficult to come by. We are still in the midst of a chip shortage, and as AMD relies entirely on TSMC to create these chips, problems with the supply chain could force laptop manufacturers to turn to other options for the time being.

Another possible reason could be that manufacturers are already gearing up for next-gen chips instead. Intel will be releasing Raptor Lake processors this year, and AMD is also slated to launch Zen 4 in the third or fourth quarter of 2022. However, these chips may not come straight to laptops, so it seems there is no reason why more manufacturers wouldn’t want to give the customers access to the (still competitive) Zen 3 refresh.

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We are still in the midst of a chip shortage, and as AMD relies entirely on TSMC to create these chips, problems with the supply chain could force laptop manufacturers to turn to other options for the time being.

This is a misunderstanding of what is causing the chip shortage, or for that matter which chips are hard to find. AMD, Intel, and nVidia use bleeding-edge processes to make their newest CPUs and GPUs. These parts are all digital. The older fabs, now “leading edge” are used for what we used to call glue chips, and are now turning into a special category of chips for Internet connectivity, PCIe, and Wi-Fi. These offload the work of converting the data as received (or sent) into a clean data flow. (Yes, I am simplifying here. Fabs can use older processes for back-end-of-fab (BEOF). These are the final metal layers, adding bumps and so on.

Then what happens? There are lots of products like washing machines, faxes, copy machines, automobiles, etc. that don’t need bleeding edge or leading edge fab technology. More to the point, these manufacturers don’t update their technology every year or so. These parts may have a five or ten-year design life and they don’t start with the newest processes. Most of them will just be looking at FinFET technology, and their current products may use 45, 65, or even 90 nm parts right now.

We talked about the slow-motion train wreck that was Intel’s original 10 nm process. They finally, in effect, started over. But it takes years to go from essentially a blank piece of paper to a working process. Most of this is called the “design rules” for the process. If you have a trace that needs to make a 90-degree turn, the design rules spell out the spacing for the designers, and how to make the masks to match what the computer design engineers are expecting. The EEs and software designers can design down to a certain point, then they have to wait for the real, final design rules to start committing designs.

Enough on train wrecks. The important point is that you have/had the entire electronics industry expecting a constant cadence of Moore’s Law, and knowing where they were in the queue. When Intel was reusing 14 nm over and over instead of moving to new designs, they had bleeding edge fabs sitting there waiting for a working process, and fabs that would normally be used for other products were still making Intel CPUs.

Oh, and then the semiconductor market got clobbered at the other end. Self-driving cars require not just a computer to run the software, they need cameras, LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, and so on. The computers started out being bleeding-edge, moved to off-the-shelf, and are now back to bleeding edge. (But from half-a-dozen computers to just one.) It’s that other stuff where the shortages are.

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Same place the INTC ARC GPU’a are:-) It is a fairly long pipe between TSMC N6 output and stocking laptops on retail shelves. As the distribution pipe fills up, availability will improve.
Alan

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I can apparently buy this right now from Best Buy for $1650 - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-14-wqxga-120h…

The specs are: Ryzen™ 9 6900HS CPU, Radeon™ RX 6700S GPU, ROG Nebula 120Hz Display, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD

But I’m confused: is the 6900HS a Zen 3+ chip?

Is this config still not what you’ve been holding out for, caromero1965? It’s sure tempting me despite being way more power than I need.

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Is this config still not what you’ve been holding out for, caromero1965?

In some ways it overshoots :slight_smile: but there are worse problems to have. My kid keeps banging on me about upgrading my laptop, I told him next 2-3 months I will finally do something.

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This is a misunderstanding of what is causing the chip shortage, or for that matter which chips are hard to find. AMD, Intel, and nVidia use bleeding-edge processes to make their newest CPUs and GPUs…

I buy this but I don’t. By which I mean, setting aside volume, I was at least expecting more Zen 3+ design wins from AMD in mobile right now, unless Intel’s new parts are just that much more available and/or that much more compelling. Either of which will present a challenge. If OEMs have concluded that AMD, whatever advantages it offers with Zen 3+, can’t deliver in volume for consumers, then Intel will romp around in the mobile segment for the foreseeable future, which would suck. If AMD is simply putting all their latest capacity into higher-margin server offerings and leaving mobile and/or desktop to Intel, I can tolerate that but it is more than a little uncomfortable to watch.

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Here is a review. It looks like a great gaming machine, but not so great if you are looking for an all day business laptop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5iXvDAwNVI
–Alan

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Thanks - good review of that laptop. My take away: great screen, gets a little hot under load, and battery life is poor when gaming. Also, he didn’t like that the machine vents hot air right at the bottom of the chinless screen, heating it up. Also said the Intel 12700H is faster at Cinebench R23 by about 8.35%, but draws a lot less power. So, that’s a good tradeoff in a laptop.

True, it won’t give you 12 hours of battery life even when not gaming (though it managed almost 9 hours using the graphics in the APU in a “web site loop” test), but it still seems like a great laptop otherwise.

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I was at least expecting more Zen 3+ design wins from AMD in mobile right now, unless Intel’s new parts are just that much more available and/or that much more compelling.

More like ODMs and OEMs are already developing Zen 4 machines. This is one of those every decade or so times when laptops (and desktops) get redesigned from the ground up. In this case for DDR5 memory. Intel decided to make Alder Lake CPUs support DDR4 and DDR5 memory, and, especially for laptops, DDR4 is competitive with DDR5 (for now…) So OEMs and ODMs* did have some “halo” models ready for DDR5, but my guess is that ODMs had DDR4 and DDR5 versions on offer in January, and especially for AMD systems, OEMs chose mostly DDR5 systems. (Why January? OEMs can look at what is sold during the Christmas and Hannaukh seasons and the end of the year purchasing for corporations to decide what they need to offer in the new year.)

Did AMD make a mistake with Zen 3+? Not really. Intel dealt with the uncertainty about when DDR5 would reach the market by making Alder Lake support both DDR4 and DDR5. AMD sort of did the same thing. They planned desktop Zen 3+ to support DDR4 and DDR5, while Zen 4 is DDR5 only. Much closer to release, AMD looked and decided to cancel Zen 3+ for the desktop and make Zen 3+ (Rembrandt 7000 series) for laptops DDR4 only. AMD probably figured that Milan X covered server clients looking for lower (effective) latency. They also probably decided that not having dual memory type CPUs would save them money over the next few years. Not so much design and production costs as inventory and support. Right decision or wrong? DDR5 only for Zen 4 was easy, the 5800X3D was there for anyone unwilling to wait for Zen 4. Zen 3+ canceled for desktops? Probably right. Laptop Zen 3+ DDR4 only? Lost some sales, but see 5800X3D again. Also, it would have required DDR5 chipsets a lot earlier, and mobo makers were really dragging their feet on DDR5 motherboards. We may still see some Zen 3+ APUs supporting DDR5, possibly under different SKUs.

  • Why did I say ODMs and OEMs the first time, then reverse it? I don’t know. What are ODMs? Decades ago, for tariff reasons, OEMs like HP bought “bare-bones” laptops without CPUs, memory, and hard disks. This created a market for such designs, and there are companies in the Far East that have made a business out of designing laptops and shipping the bare-bones versions by boat to the US or Europe. The OEMs like Dell and HP drop in the missing parts (SSDs rather than hard disks today) and offer them for sale. Tariffs are no longer a major factor, but not having CPUs and other high-price components sitting on an ocean-going freighter still makes doing things this way worthwhile. I wonder how many ODM designs are sitting on freighters outside Los Angeles? Both Rembrandt and Alder Lake.
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Antonio,

By which I mean, setting aside volume, I was at least expecting more Zen 3+ design wins from AMD in mobile right now, unless Intel’s new parts are just that much more available and/or that much more compelling. Either of which will present a challenge.

I rather suspect that the company has decided to devote as much of its available production of “bleeding edge” parts to the server market as the server market can absorb because the server market is considerably more profitable than the laptop market. The laptop parts will become more readily available as “bleeding edge” production capacity ramps up.

And that’s absolutely the right decision from a business perspective even though it frustrates those of us who would prefer AMD processors in our new laptops.

Norm.

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More like ODMs and OEMs are already developing Zen 4 machines. This is one of those every decade or so times when laptops (and desktops) get redesigned from the ground up.

This is what I am hoping is going on.

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This is what I am hoping is going on.

The more I think about the timing, the more I think the Rembrandt laptops would be shipped as bare machines at exactly the wrong time. They would have been in transit when the pileup at the port of Los Angeles was starting. What happens then? I’ve never dealt with overseas shipping.

However, our family company had one instance where a power supply was being shipped as an urgent replacement for a customer in Rochester NY. (Guess who 50 years ago.) The airline promised that if we got it to the (Philadelphia International) airport before 4 PM, they could have it delivered by 8 PM. Just the sort of service you want, but it wasn’t on the plane! It was a one-stop flight stopping in Utica. The crew there slid it down a chute to get it out of the way, then realized they didn’t have a forklift to use to put it back on again. By the time we found out this part of the story, it was too late for a shipment that day. (Translation, they waited for the crew who mishandled it to come in the next day and tell them where it was.) The customer offered to send a truck over, but the staff at Utica weren’t capable of thinking outside the box. Anyway, the air carrier ended up paying full price plus shipping plus a penalty, which we deducted from the price of the replacement.

Are shipping insurance companies going to take huge costs writing down goods that were on those ships? At what point did the insurers (if any for late deliveries) start refusing business covering 3-month to 6-month delays? No idea, and if I did find out, I would walk away. (My daughter works for a company that may have written some policies.)

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Norm must still be watching Faux News. The Port is entirely run by the City of Los Angeles, not the state. I’d blame the pandemic or the mayor before I’d blame Newsom.

https://www.portoflosangeles.org/about/port-101#:~:text=The%….

If you have links about lawsuits, I’d be happy to see them. Without them, you have been punked.

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