AMD: R9xx Speculation

Why would they have single digit yields? Does making a new architecture totally reset all prior experience on a process node, or what?

 

Delayed because of yields? It doesn't make sense. Cayman's size is expected to be comparable to GF104 or slightly higher, so yields should be that bad. Metal layer respin or anything similar would be more sensible as a reason of delay. On the assumption, that this article isn't just rewritten Fuad's piece.

 

In this chiphell thread today:

As usual had trouble getting the sense of the translation, the first quote particularly - think basically saying they are pushing 6970 to 580 level. Only a slight change though makes the sentence read "580 is of little danger, performance is strong, is equivalent to 580."

Followup post is much more direct the 6970 is below the 5970(at vantage score i guess), many games play well though, currently driver is a mess and if they get it right should lead to noticeable improvements,

Edit: Later in thread Napoleon also accidently mentions he has one as well as a friend of Tom Smith for testing

 

The other probelem is that you need to have data points from the same cooler. Tempurature is going to affect your power draw as well and you can see that all non-reference boards are keeping the idle temps lower than he reference, which is going to correspond to lower power. Curiously it looks like they have a lower leakage reference (as it it hottest, but still low idle power) and slightly higher leakage non-reference boards.

 

Looks like both conforming Cayman's delay or denouncing it is under NDA

 

Oh. Yay.
November 2010: battle of the paper launches.

 

Ye would suck although I did post about 1 week ago a news bit from Xbit that suggested that AMD were having TSMC yield issues on the 40nm node.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1488995&postcount=4371

 

That's about capacity, not necessarily yields.

 

It's like TSMC want to drive business towards Global Foundries for the next few generations. If GF can pick up the ball and do a decent job (ie not screw up all the time like TSMC) then they will have a ton of business going their way in the next year.

Having said that, there is supposed to be a lot of disinformation going on around the Cayman launch, so I'll hope this is just another incorrect rumour.

 

But wouldn't capacity affect yields? Or am I missing something.

 

Is there any delay in launching 6900 series this month? Will a person be able to buy a 6900 series this month?

 

That thought crossed my mind more than once hearing news about this launch, I have a feeling AMD might be playing us all just to get some drama to compete with nVidia's launch spoiler.

 

I wouldn't consider that a good thing if the 580 launches tomorrow. If AMD want's people to hold off the last thing they want rumored is a delay. Now is the time for AMD to speak up about this rumor so people don't go out buying 580s or change their minds because the 6900 series release time frame becomes unknown.

If I recall correctly, this very thing happened with the 5000 series when the gtx 400 series release date became "unknown" (AKA late).

 

If the 500 euro GTX 580's launch price is anywhere close to the truth, I wouldn't be too worried if i were AMD. That target group is a minority anyway.

I think AMD would be more worried by the presence of cards like that rumored 460 SE, but they have the 6750, sorry the 6850 now anyway.

 

"According to our sources, yields for Cayman are still in the single digits"

I highly doubt that, I can understand issues with capacity and drivers, but single digits yields is nonsense. I dont even believe GTX580 have a single digits yields after a year of fine-tuning tech-process from NV and TSMC alike, but AMD with a much smaller die and 1.5 years of 40nm experience suddenly drop from very good yields to GTX480 level of yields a year ago? BS.

That said, its possible AMD could delay launch to work on drivers and build up stock, but I doubt even that. They would miss Chrismas sales, as well as yet another opportunity to show hard launch in the face of Nvidias soft/paper launch. So IMO even if they have like 50k in stock now, AMD is launching in November.
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I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in that. The cost is not the only factor I'm considering but the idea that the GTX 580 is an actual released product. That can do more harm to AMD then to nvidia because it's priced high. Remember, AMD has been very tight lipped about the 6900 series even after the launch of the 6800 series. Even I am starting to wonder if the 6900 series will be something launched this year or if the rumors are true of a 2011 launch.

Nvidia is alleged to be showing their card tomorrow. If so, AMD has to respond not only to that but any rumored delays. If Nvidia is calling AMD out they simply can't ignore it if all of that is true tomorrow. Even if there are only 50 cards to sell...

 

From the wafer you get the same amount of chips (yields), regardless if there is one wafer, or 10000 (capacity).

 

Exactly, if you have less capacity(wafers) coming out properly then the yields would be affected too I would think i.e. less yields being made.

So if you have less waffers been manufactured then there are less chips to use.

 

First quote says that the GTX580 is in danger, not dangerous. 6970's performance good and is at least on par with GTX580.

 

Yields = basically the percentage of working chips. Capacity = basically the number of chips or wafers they can produce per day, month or whatever.