Their chip manufacturer, TSMC, isn't refining the 20nm process as quickly as it should

Apr 22, 2014 06:33 GMT  ·  By

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is pulling a forty, as one might say, proving itself unable to roll out its next-generation manufacturing technology on schedule. Both NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices are suffering from it.

Back in 2009-2010, TSMC, the world's greatest semiconductor manufacturer, had yield issues with the 40nm node.

Due to various equipment and production issues, it just couldn't make enough functional chips for NVIDIA and AMD, both of which call on TSMC to mass-produce their GPUs.

Something similar appears to be happening now for the 20nm technology, on which both NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture and AMD's own future GPUs were supposed to be based.

The situation is pretty serious too, to the point where neither rival will be able to release 20nm products this year.

AMD Senior Vice-President Lisa Su confirmed this when asked about the issue during its Q1 investors call.

"I think what I said earlier sort of what we're doing in terms of technology strategy, we are 28 this year, we have 20-nanometer in design, and then FinFET thereafter. So that's the overall product portfolio," were the exact words.

NVIDIA offered some more details, or rather the folks at 3DCenter.org provided some information on the next two Maxwell chips.

Back in February, when the corporation unveiled the GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti, the plan was for those GPUs (GM107-300 and GM107-400) to be the only Maxwell-series based on the 28nm process technology.

A GeForce GTX 780 / 780 Ti designed with the GM100 or most likely GM104 would be rolled out as part of TSMC's first wave of 20nm FinFET wafers.

With TSMC's inability to make 20nm chips now, however, plans have changed. Or maybe the GTX 750/ 750 Ti was actually a hint that this would happen, and that NVIDIA had forewarning.

Whatever the case, the NVIDIA Maxwell architecture will be designed on the 28nm node, with the GM204 and GM206 set to tape out later this month.

That only means that the first samples / engineering units will come out though. Actual product availability still isn't expected before the fourth quarter. The GM204 will replace the GK104 (which is unexpected considering that the existing Maxwell GPU on the market is named GM107, with a “1” not a “2”). Maybe NVIDIA is reserving the GM100 series monikers for when it finally does have 20nm tech to draw on.

That said, 20nm graphics processing units from Advanced Micro Devices and NVIDIA will only debut in the second quarter of 2015.