The dark, satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn that AMD may have to crawl to Intel for packaging help.
According to Tom’s Hardware UBS analysts reckon TSMC’s capacity squeeze could force AMD into a foundry deal with Intel, its old sworn x86 enemy. Chipzilla’s EMIB-T packaging is looking useful because CoWoS capacity is jammed solid by the AI gold rush.
Google, the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple, AMD and SpaceX are all expected to snuffle around Chipzilla’s EMIB-T tech, according to UBS chatter. Job’s Mob turning up in the same queue as AMD is the sort of supply-chain farce that makes procurement people drink too much.
Intel expects to offer EMIB-T in volume during 2027, with package yields approaching 90 per cent. The less lovely bit is the substrate yield, reportedly stuck at 50 per cent.
EMIB-T is pitched as about 50 per cent cheaper than TSMC’s CoWoS and uses through-silicon vias drilled through embedded silicon bridges. In plain English, it is clever plumbing for chips that need power and signals moving about without turning the package into toast.
Goldman Sachs has meanwhile given AMD’s AI rack dreams a cold bath. The bank expects Nvidia to ship 50,000 racks in 2026 against AMD’s 5,000, then 92,000 in 2027 against 13,000, and 148,000 in 2028 against 15,000.
That makes Nvidia 10 times bigger in 2026, seven times bigger in 2027 and 9.8 times bigger in 2028. AMD can call that momentum if it wants, but the scoreboard is being operated by someone wearing a Jensen Huang leather jacket.
AMD has tried to make its rack pitch less anaemic by teaming up with Cerebras, whose wafer-scale engine packs memory and compute onto a single giant slab of silicon. That is a decent bit of wizardry, but it does not magically erase Nvidia’s lead.
The outfit has snapped up Taalas too, chasing chips that bake a model’s maths into the silicon itself. However, the chip only works with the model it was designed for, which makes it less “future-proof.”
AMD’s grand AI plan now appears to involve fighting Nvidia, depending on TSMC, flirting with Chipzilla and hoping nobody notices the rack gap.
