14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm did something very curious lately, something that seems to have led to speculations about whether or not NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices might seek out different 28nm suppliers.
For those who haven't learned of it yet, Qualcomm has decided to ask UMC and Samsung to make its Snapdragon S4 processors.
Apparently not satisfied with the yield levels of TSMC's 28nm manufacturing node, the company had to seek the aforementioned alternatives.
We can't say we heard many people saying NVIDIA and AMD would do the same, but there have to have been at least some murmurs if Digitimes actually looked into the possibility.
There was also the report about how these two GPU makers will have to cope with chip shortages for the whole year.
At any rate, there were concerns, however small, that the video card makers would seek out Samsung and/or UMC as well.
That will not happen. Advanced Micro Devices collaborated with TSMC on 28nm Southern Islands production from the very start, and has almost finished tape-out.
Production will begin by the end of the year (2012), while Brazos 2.0 and Hondo (based on 40nm bulk CMOS process) will move to 28nm as well, in 2013.
NVIDIA might have had a reason to consider asking for Samsung's services, at least for mobile SoC, if it didn't think its Tegra 3 was in direct opposition with Samsung's own mobile chips.
As for TSMC itself, it continues to be confident in its 28nm manufacturing and posted record profits for the month of April. Long story short, it is doing fine, regardless of how dire the press is making the 28nm situation seem.
Finally, regardless of how expansive Samsung's manufacturing capabilities are, TSMC is still somewhat better at 28nm manufacture. All in all, changing foundry partnerships at this point in time would be far too risky for the Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California-based corporations.