TSMC's low 28nm yields seem to be the primary culprits

Sep 19, 2011 06:43 GMT  ·  By

AMD seems to have delayed the launch of its next-generation Radeon HD 7000 graphics cores to early 2012 due to high demand for the HD 6000 series and TSMC's inability to mass produce chips using the 28nm fabrication process.

According to Nordic Hardware, AMD had capacity problems with the HD 6000 series graphics cards since orders from OEMs and distribution channels have been larger than expected.

As a result, AMD sees no reason to replace these GPUs with newer parts, especially considering their Arch-rival, Nvidia, won't release any new graphics chips until later in 2012.

However, it seems like the decision to delay the launch of the Radeon HD 7000 series to 2012 is also motivated by the low yield achieved by TSMC with its new 28nm fabrication process.

If fact, the Taiwanese foundry doesn't expect to ship more than 7-10 thousand wafers built on the 28nm node until the end of the year.

No other information about AMD's next-generation graphics card series was disclosed, but from all the previous leaks that found their way to the Web, we now know that AMD's Radeon HD 7000 product family will use two different architectures.

The first solutions to arrive will use the VLIW4 shader arrangement introduced with the Radeon HD 6900 series, and these will be known under the code names of Lombok and Thames.

Later in 2012, AMD will also introduce the company's first graphics cards based on the Next Generation Core (NCG) architecture, which was detailed at the Fusion Developer Summit.

This architecture will be used in the Tahiti GPU, that will also spawn a Radeon HD 6990 replacement known under the code name of New Zealand.

Together with the all new architecture, AMD will most probably also introduce XDR2 memory developed by Rambus, which its manufacturer claims it can double the bandwidth of GDDR5, while using 30% less power. (via Hardcore Hardware)