14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has recently reiterated its plans to start commercial production of chips using the 28nm fabrication process by the end of the year.
However, the foundry doesn't expect to manufacture too many products based on this node, as it estimates that sales of 28nm parts will account only for 2-3% of its total wafer sales in the last quarter of the year.
TSMC hasn't revealed any information regarding the customers that are expected to mass produce chips based on this advanced fabrication node in 2011, but the remarks were made after rumors suggested Nvidia's Kepler GPUs might be pushed back to 2012 as a result of some 28nm production issues faced by the foundry.
According to some sources cited by DigiTimes, Nvidia has not changed its release schedule for Kepler and expects the first next-generation GPUs to enter mass production in 2011.
Based on the information provided by the same source, graphics cards based on Kepler cores are expected to arrive in 2012.
AMD reportedly has a similar schedule for Southern Islands, as both companies have contracted TSMC to build their next-gen 28nm graphics chips.
Even though TSMC says it's ready to begin 28nm mass production by the end of the year, the foundry will still have to go through a learning curve before it is able to achieve satisfactory yields.
This is especially true for GPUs, which use much larger dies and a more complex architecture than FPGA devices.
Industry analysts, however, believe that the Taiwanese foundry will have an easier road in front of it compared to the transition to 40nm, since this time won't have to go through any equipment upgrades.
When it transitioned to the 40nm production node, TSMC needed about a year to raise its yields to a satisfactory level.