AMD Says It Already Has Working Samples of 28nm GPUs

AMD might be closer to the release of its first chips built using the 28nm fabrication process than we think, as recently the company's interim CEO revealed that they already have working samples of GPUs built using this production process.

According to the same report posted by the ITP website, AMD's chief executive officer also stated that the company is on track for releasing parts the first Southern Islands GPUs built using this advanced process by the end of the year.

Seifert hasn't mentioned the architecture used for manufacturing the working samples that he refereed to, but these are expected to be just a pipe cleaner for the new process.

The fact that AMD has working samples of 28nm GPUs comes as little surprise since the retail cards are expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of the year, but what's important to note about this story is that a link towards it was posted on the Globalfoundies website.

According to Fudzilla, this seems to suggest that Globalfoundies might be involved in the production of these chips, which would come as a great surprise for most of us.

This isn't the first time that Globalfoundies' name is associated with Southern Islands graphics cores, as the first reports to talk about AMD's next generation GPUs also mentioned that a part of these chips would be manufactured by the ATIC-owned foundry.

All these allegations were however dismissed since many believed it was simply to expensive to develop GPUs for two different foundries.

From the information available at this point in time, we know that the Radeon HD 7000 series will comprise three new 28nm GPUs with the code names of Thames, Lombok and Tahiti. 

The first two will target the entry-level and mid-range markets, respectively, while the latter is AMD's high-performance GPU. In addition to be used for two single-GPU graphics cards, this core will also spawn a Radeon HD 6990 replacement that carries the New Zealand code name.