14 DAY TRIAL // Even before Advanced Micro Devices launched its much-anticipated family of Radeon HD 5xxx series, there were reports that the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker was dealing with production issues on the TSMC's 40nm manufacturing process. The company never really confirmed these reports, ultimately claiming that its Radeon HD 5xxx series was doing fine and the release schedule was not affected. However, it appears that the chip maker finally decided to make things public and explain why users find it hard to get their hands on any of its latest-gen cards, in stores.
The company, according to a recent interview by Dave Baumann, product manager for the HD 5xxx series, has faced issues with supply since the beginning, which resulted in a six-week manufacturing delay. According to Baumann, the delay was related to the complexity of 40nm graphics processing units, although he hasn't specified the exact cause.
Dave Baumann also confirmed that this resulted into a lower-than-expected yields, but that didn't affect the company's launch dates for the new GPUs. However, it appears that, despite the constraint, overall yields have been increasing steadily, which basically means that offer should improve in the upcoming weeks. The company also confirmed that these issues with the 40nm manufacturing process will not affect its upcoming value-oriented products, namely the new cards that will be based on the Redwood and Cedar GPUs.
This GPU shortage is affecting the chip maker, as it needs to gain more market share from its main competitor, NVIDIA. The Santa Clara, California-based graphics chip maker is currently preparing the launch of its much-anticipated, Fermi-based consumer-grade graphics cards. AMD would certainly benefit from it this time, to ship more if its latest-generation cards, but, unfortunately, the aforementioned problems stay in the way of that goal.