[O/C]Upcoming ATI Cards to be Built on 40nm

Upcoming ATI Cards to be Built on 40nm
by dostov

The planned next generation graphics parts from AMD/ATI, known as Northern Islands, was initially designed to be manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 32nm process. Since the late 2009 announcement that TSMC was facing difficulties with its 32nm manufacturing node and would not be developing the process, plans had to change at AMD. Sources close to both companies...

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What does this mean for the normal person? I thought the point of a refresh is to get smaller chips to get better consumption and heat?

Global Foundries's 28nm node isn't ready for primetime yet.

But architectural improvements on the same node isn't a bad thing.

Just think of a 45nm core2duo wolfdale vs. 45nm Nehalem. Around the same transistor count, big performance increase.

Work out your architectural bugs on a cheaper and safer node, then port it down.

Sort-of OT, but congrats on your first news article; nicely done dostov!

killem2 said:

What does this mean for the normal person? I thought the point of a refresh is to get smaller chips to get better consumption and heat?

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The point of a new architecture is to bring better performance and new features. The point of a new, smaller process is to keep power consumption and heat at bay as the new architecture implements more transistors.

This is why ATI's Northern Islands architecture was set for 32nm node. Unfortunately the manufacturing process isn't going to be ready so they have to adapt. It is believed they made changes to the architecture in order to implement as many new features and performance increases as possible, but not the complete new architecture because of the 40nm process being too big (too much power consumption --> too much heat).

I hope this helps in understanding!

Cheers!

Very nice

Good reading Dostov!!!

Thanks for the info!

Inteller

congratulations good article.

I am pretty ****ed. I was really looking forward to a 32nm gpu. Ah well I might as well get the northern islands refresh cards anyway

Shiggity said:

Global Foundries's 28nm node isn't ready for primetime yet.

But architectural improvements on the same node isn't a bad thing.

Just think of a 45nm core2duo wolfdale vs. 45nm Nehalem. Around the same transistor count, big performance increase.

Work out your architectural bugs on a cheaper and safer node, then port it down.

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Interesting stuff, the only problem I see is that ATI's small chip philosophy seems to require a new process for each generation (adding features and power but reducing die size).

Are there any articles that state how far along GF's 28nm process is? Is it no longer on track for Q4 2010/Q1 2011?

Neural Net said:

Are there any articles that state how far along GF's 28nm process is? Is it no longer on track for Q4 2010/Q1 2011?

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According to Xbit Labs, both manufacturer promise their 28nm processes will be ready for mass production in late 2010, but you have to take that kind of info with a (large) grain of salt.

Xbit Laboratories said:

Both Globalfoundries and TSMC promise that their 28nm high-performance (28HP) process technologies will be available for mass production already in late 2010. But there are chances that TSMC’s process technology will arrive somewhat later than expected, whereas Globalfoundries does not have a track record of quick and flawless ramp up of bulk fabrication processes.

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More at Xbit: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/..._Different_Suppliers_Hybrid_Architecture.html

Also, to release new products in Q4, ATI have to start mass production in Q2 2010. TSMC takes no less than 10 weeks to manufacture chips. Add to that the time to put the chips on the boards, box them and ship... 28nm products won't come out before Q2 2011.

dostov said:

According to Xbit Labs, both manufacturer promise their 28nm processes will be ready for mass production in late 2010, but you have to take that kind of info with a (large) grain of salt.



More at Xbit: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/..._Different_Suppliers_Hybrid_Architecture.html

Also, to release new products in Q4, ATI have to start mass production in Q2 2010. TSMC takes no less than 10 weeks to manufacture chips. Add to that the time to put the chips on the boards, box them and ship... 28nm products won't come out before Q2 2011.

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Interesting stuff. Given how Fermi turned out ATI could afford to wait until then as it has the ability to reduce the prices of its existing cards and still turn a profit, while Nvidia can't do that.

It will be very interesting to see what ATI does with Northern Islands.