AMD: R9xx Speculation

TechRadar talked to AMD's David Hoff recently:

No concrete information, but better than a fake slide.

 

The earllier snippet, plus:

does, at least, make it sound like a substantial change. Have to admit I'd started wondering if it was only going to be a refresh, constrained by 40nm.

 

And yet nvidia still got wafers for their gt200 series.

The point is AMD didn't get enough wafers, the ones they did get have excellent yield -- well at least much better than nvidia.

News flash, that's not AMD's fault (well, except for, like I said, bad planning), nor can they do anything about it except for book more wafers next time.

Only yielding problem is the real production problem here. So you are the one with completely misleading information.

 

You don't have to hope. Such products will never see the light when you can simply get a 5830 with 32ROP running @~725MHz which would have the upper hand on TDP, cost, performance and T2M.

That's only at most one year before the production date and NI would have been or was only a few months away from being taped-out by then. And your target process should set alongside your floor plan -- not something you can just change that late. And if you do change sometime close to first silicon, that's at least half a year gone straight to waste.

You can safely bet on the other horse. But I won't get in your way if you insist.

 

So... your conclusion is that AMD didn't "book" enough wafers solely because Nvidia had 40nm GT2x0 wafers?
TSMC had stated a certain output volume for summer '09 of 40nm wafers, they didn't reach those numbers until around the end of '09/beg of '10.

 

Uh...

There was no bad planning involved. According to what TSMC was telling anyone they were planning to ramp up wafer production as normal.

AMD made wafer allocations based upon the assumption that wafer ramping would be similar to past nodes (55 nm, 65 nm, etc.) with a chance of it being slightly slower. The fact that TSMC then had significant problems producing enough wafers to meet demand on 40 nm wasn't anything AMD could have planned for in advance.

Sure if AMD could have looked into the future and known 40 nm wafer supply was going to be severly constrained, I'm sure they would have secured a larger initial allotment.

If that was bad planning, then ATI/AMD have been doing bad wafer allocation planning at TSMC going all the way back to the 90's.

And enough for GT200? Sure, Nvidia took a huge gamble and secured a large allotment of wafers hoping to be able to launch GT200 on a hot lot even if yield was non-optimal. That was, what, around Oct./Nov. 2009? Half a year later they finally launch and can't sell all of the few cores they did produce. Then had to go and sell back some of their allotment. And suffered massive losses. Good planning? Or yet another company suffering from TSMC problems at 40 nm? Hopefully, you'll be at least consistent in which of those choices you go with.

Regards,
SB

 

I have no idea but I must type

 

Wow... that is just... words cannot describe.

 

@ neliz: I feel Rick-Roll'd.

This is the AMD R9xx Speculation thread - and you post a link to a badly written Cypress OC analysis based on the experiences of a pubertizing kid trying to run Crysis @ different clock and memory speeds?

 

Yes yes, but don't you see! Barts only needs a 128-bit bus!

Like that will change the game...

 

Have you spotted this or not yet?
Charlie says:

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=69973&postcount=182
http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3249&page=19



Now, I am really excited and happy. Charlie, thank you for making me so happy.

 

if true, it would put nv's perf/mm2 to absolute shame.

 

The 256bit bus is there for the 32 ROPs and not just plain bandwith increase if the specs are true. The writer completly missed the point that 5770 had 16 ROPs.

 

I'm jesting!
I just put it up to show people that with just 14 years of age and a PC, you could write articles on the interwibblez too that would seem deep and informative to the ill-informed.

 

I think Charlie is just speculating here, not stating. Otherwise he would have published it.

 

LOL !

 

Perhaps he is in a process of preparing to write his article or just writing it now.

 

25% of real performance just by change of the front-end? Isn't it overly optimistic?

 

that's some high quality weed right there.

 

Reads like speculations. However one can hope it turns out to be true.