- AMD’s Versal Premium Gen 2 Packaged Memory Launch Formally Ends HBM in Its Adaptive SoC Lineup
- The move represents a ~65% cut in bandwidth from the discontinued Versal HBM’s 840 GB/s, clocking in at just 288 GB/s.
- AMD describes this as a win, citing better availability, a smaller form factor, efficiency improvements, and guaranteed memory supply for the next 15 years.
The rise of AI may have eaten AMD’s lunch, thanks to an HBM shortage that forced it to turn to lower-bandwidth LPDDR5x for its Versal Premium Gen 2 packaged memory offerings.
AMD recently announced the Versal Premium Gen 2 packaged memory family, which leverages up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory directly in the chip package.
The move, which effectively reduces bandwidth by 65% compared to the previous generation Versal offerings used by HBM, is seen by many as the need of the hour as memory supplies dwindle amid overwhelming demand.
A needs-based shift to lower bandwidth memory
AMD’s move is calculated, even if it comes at a significant performance cost to the chip designer. HBM’s memory supply is limited, and even within AMD’s own lineup, its more cost-effective (and more demanding) Instinct data center GPUs take priority for current and future HBM iterations.
AMD is therefore both a beneficiary and a victim of the same wave of AI demand that creates opportunities at one end but limits supply for other segments, such as its consumer hardware, gaming and SoC divisions.
AMD’s Versal line comes from Xilinx, which it acquired in 2022. Xilinx shipped its first packaged memory FPGAs, Virtex UltraScale+ HBM parts, in 2018 with up to 16GB of first-generation HBM. The next Versal HBM series, a variant of the Versal Premium line, supported up to 32 GB of HBM2e with a bandwidth of 840 GB/s.
The problem for AMD is not only getting supply for its new Versal FPGAs, something it calls adaptive SoC (System-on-Chip), but the fact that these are extremely long-tail products. In other words, support, dedicated supply, and accessories must remain available to consumers for a long time if they want to adopt and continue working with a particular FPGA class, which complicates matters.
AMD discontinued its next-generation Versal line in September 2025, citing HBM2E supply limitations rather than issues with the chips themselves, and offered no alternatives to customers, stating only that “final orders (LTB) for adaptable SoC parts will be accepted through June 30, 2026, subject to material availability.”
The new Versal line effectively addresses this gap, claiming a 15-year lifecycle and citing “memory longevity” as the reason for its switch to LPDDR5X.
AMD’s move gives it some other advantages despite the obvious bandwidth choke point: LPDDR5X has better availability than HBM for the foreseeable future, and also operates at industrial temperatures, while HBM tends to stack in ways that require advanced cooling. Not only does LPDDR5X run cooler, often passively in most configurations, but because it only has 4 integrated memory chips, it is more than 60% smaller than comparable FPGAs.
The newer FPGAs will be considerably cheaper to manufacture than their HBM alternatives under current market conditions, and with Chinese memory suppliers like CXMT also eyeing the same market, Versal Gen 2 could be the long stay its predecessor was initially intended to have in a rapidly changing market.
