AMD senior director Travis Kirsch said in an interview published October 20 that CEO Lisa Su was among those who proposed bringing back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D as a final CPU upgrade for long-time AM4 users with DDR4 systems. Kirsch said the idea was to give people who had stayed with AM4 for nearly a decade one more upgrade while keeping their existing platform.
The plan predated memory-market changes
Kirsch said AMD planned the return before later changes in the memory market and did not conceive it as a response to DDR5 shortages. The stated rationale was to give AM4 owners with DDR4 another upgrade option, not to react to those later market conditions.
Restarting production required new engineering work
Kirsch said production of the original Ryzen 7 5800X3D had ended and restarting the line took time. AMD vice president David McAfee separately explained that TSMC’s stacking process had changed between first- and second-generation cache production, so AMD had to re-engineer the processor for the changed process.
McAfee said AMD requalified the stacking process, built samples and tested reliability before ramping production again. Requalification means checking that a manufacturing process meets requirements before using it for production.
