TSMC Obtains Orders From Both AMD and NVIDIA For 16nm FinFet Chips

[HKZeroFive]

Although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is behind Samsung Foundry with its first-generation FinFET fabrication technology, which is why it lost orders from Apple and Qualcomm, it will still produce chips using 16nm FinFET manufacturing process for other major customers, including Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia Corp.

Advanced Micro Devices plans to use both 14nm FinFET and 16nm FinFET process technologies for its products due next year. It is believed that the company will order 14nm microprocessors from GlobalFoundries, whereas TSMC will concentrate on manufacturing of next-generation AMD Radeon graphics processing units code-named “Greenland” and other using 16nm FinFET process.

Nvidia Corp. added Samsung Foundry into the list of its manufacturing partners earlier this year, but it will continue to use TSMC’s services for its next-generation GP100 graphics chip based on the “Pascal” architecture.

In addition to AMD and Nvidia, the list of TSMC’s 16nm FinFET clients include Apple, Avago, Broadcom, HiSilicon Technologies, LG Electronics, MediaTek and Xilinx, reports DigiTimes web-site.

Nothing major, this just pretty much confirms that both NVIDIA and AMD are getting ready to build the actual cards, likely for Pascal and Arctic Islands. Still have to wait quite a bit, but I'm excited .

Sauce: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/tsmc-obtains-orders-from-amd-and-nvidia-for-16nm-finfet-chips/

[Bob Jim]

Huh. Does anyone have any idea roughly when the new AMD/Nvidia cards are launching next year? Like, just Q1-2 or Q3-4?

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

GCN 1.3? That probably means there won't be any exclusivity shit going on... 

[Lethal Seraph]

Wish Samsung would already join the ring and get a 3way competition going.

[Deletive]

Wish Samsung would already join the ring and get a 3way competition going.

With what? Samsung doesn't give a shit. They're not going to get into the GPU server market now which is like the only thing that is currently worth while for them. the consumer market doesn't need more room. They would just end up wasting their money and leaving the market.

[HKZeroFive]

Wish Samsung would already join the ring and get a 3way competition going.

They said they will, but I'm not sure when. It looks promising though:

Samsung is currently working on multiple HBM packages featuring two (2Hi stack), four (4Hi) and eight (8Hi) 8Gb memory devices on a base logic die with 1024-bit interface, according to a slide that the company demonstrated at the IDF. Maximum data-rates of Samsung’s HBM products will be 2Gb/s, which will support up to 256GB/s of bandwidth per chip.

Source

[Sauron]

Wish Samsung would already join the ring and get a 3way competition going.

 

It would be very hard for them to be competitive. Aside from the hardware itself, they don't have enough experience in making drivers; they'd have to properly optimize thousands of titles from scratch, not an easy feat. Even intel is struggling in those regards, and it's probably part of the reason intel doesn't make dedicated gpus.

[kacper]

http://english.cw.com.tw/article.do?action=show&id=14895

Good read about how Samsung overtook TSMC in race for 16nm

 

Anyone knows how GloFo's 14nm compare to Intel's 14nm?

[WereCat]

Huh. Does anyone have any idea roughly when the new AMD/Nvidia cards are launching next year? Like, just Q1-2 or Q3-4?

Most likely Q2-Q3 ... GPUs are usually released in summer.

[Nielips]

Bit of a random question, but when AMD/Nvidia or designing chips, how do they make trials? Do they have small scale in house facilities, or do they use facilities of other companies?

[Tomsen]

Bit of a random question, but when AMD/Nvidia or designing chips, how do they make trials? Do they have small scale in house facilities, or do they use facilities of other companies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out