14 DAY TRIAL // AMD may become the first graphics card maker to release a solution built using the 28nm fabrication node, beating Nvidia to the punch with as much as four months, if we were to believe a report that recently reached the Web.
The article in question is written by none other than SemiAccurate's Charlie Demerjian, and talks about Nvidia's next-generation Kepler graphics core.
Reading through the article, it becomes apparent that Demerjian believes that AMD will be the first company to release a graphics core based on the 28nm node, while Nvidia will lag behind by more than four month.
The editor bases its assumptions on a series of previous reports, which stated AMD taped out Southern Islands in February of this year, while Nvidia's Kepler didn't tape out until early June.
Taking into consideration the seven to eight months delay from tape to product launch, Demerjian came up with some estimates regarding the release date of these GPUs, which seem to suggest that Southern Islands will arrive sometime in September, while Kepler is scheduled for a February 2012 debut.
This last release date seems to go really well with a series of reports that came from Fudzilla, which placed the launch of Kepler in the first quarter of 2012, as well as with an Nvidia roadmap that was presented during ISC 2012 and also claimed a 2012 release for Kepler.
What the author fails to take into account, however, is the maturity of the 28nm TSMC process, that will be used for manufacturing the AMD and Nvidia GPUs.
Recent reports suggest that TSMC's 28nm yields are still low and, if this is indeed true, then both next-generation graphics cards might face delays, which could negate the advantage that AMD presumably has over Nvidia. (via Tech Report)