- AMD’s Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory on Package launch formally ends HBM in its adaptive SoC lineup
- The move represents a ~65% bandwidth cut from the discontinued Versal HBM’s 840 GB/s, down to just 288 GB/s
- AMD paints this as a win, citing better availability, a smaller form factor, efficiency gains and guaranteed memory supply for the next 15 years
The AI boom may have just eaten AMD’s own lunch, thanks to an HBM shortage that forced it to resort to lower-bandwidth LPDDR5x for its Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory on Package offerings.
AMD recently announced the Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory-on-Package family, which leverages up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory directly on the chip package.
The move, which effectively reduces bandwidth by 65% compared to previous generations of Versal offerings using HBM, is seen by many as the need of the hour as memory supplies dwindle under overwhelming demand.
A need-based switch to lower bandwidth memory
AMD’s move is calculated, even if it comes at a significant performance cost to the chip designer. HBM memory supply is strained, and even within AMD’s own lineup, its more profitable (and more demanding) Instinct data center GPUs take precedence over current and future iterations of HBMs.
AMD is therefore both beneficiary and victim of the same AI demand wave, creating opportunities at one end but limiting supply in other segments, such as its hardware, gaming and consumer-grade SoC divisions.
AMD’s Versal lineup originates from Xilinx, which it acquired in 2022. Xilinx shipped its first on-package memory FPGAs, the Virtex UltraScale+ HBM parts, in 2018 with up to 16GB of first-generation HBM. The follow-up Versal HBM series, a variant of the Versal Premium series, supported up to 32 GB HBM2e with 840 GB/s bandwidth.
The problem for AMD is not just buying supplies for their new Versal FPGAs, something it calls an Adaptive SoC (System-on-Chip), but the fact that these are extremely long-tail products. In other words, support, dedicated supplies, and accessories must remain available to consumers for a long time if they are to embrace and continue working with a particular FPGA class, complicating matters.
AMD discontinued its last-generation Versal series in September 2025, citing HBM2E supply constraints rather than issues with the chips themselves, and offered no alternatives to customers, stating only that “last order (LTB) for Adaptive SoC parts will be accepted until June 30, 2026, subject to material availability.”
The new Versal lineup effectively addresses this gap, stating that it has a 15-year life cycle and citing “memory longevity” as the reason for its pivot to LPDDR5X.
AMD’s move gives it some other advantages despite the obvious bandwidth chokepoint: LPDDR5X has better availability than HBM for the foreseeable future, and it also operates at industrial temperatures, whereas HBM tends to stack in ways that require advanced cooling. Not only does LPDDR5X run cooler, often passively in most configurations, but thanks to only 4 memory chips on board, it is over 60% smaller than comparable FPGAs.
The newer FPGAs will be significantly cheaper to manufacture than their HBM alternatives under current market conditions, and with Chinese memory vendors like CXMT also eyeing the same market, Versal Gen 2 could be the long-stay that its predecessor was originally intended to be in a rapidly changing market.
