Amd to produce next Nvidia chips?
- Thread starter PatrickL
- Start date
Like AMD doesn't have enough trouble keeping it's head above water. They are not IBM.... think they can afford to guaranty quanity of good chips from each wafer - i.e. sell nVidia only the good chips, like IBM supposably did? AMD barely keeps it's head above water, have they even showed a positive quarter in the last 2 years? Are they so desperate to take a chance on losing money on fabing nVidia chips, or, is nVidia so desperate to take a chance on a fab that has never produced chips for anyone other than themselves? And certianly nothing so extreme as a 200+M graphics chip.....
This smells pretty funny to me......
This smells pretty funny to me......
processes like 110nm, 150nm and 220nm are really just "tweaks" on the 130nm, 180nm and 250nm processes repectively - they are physically using the same tools. You'll note that the CPU vendors traditionally don't bother with these optical shrinks and stick with the base node - Intel certianly went 180nm to 130nm and the 90nm.
For both AMD and Intel, they continually tweak their processes once new technology is available. When AMD was at 180 nm, they were using tech that was developed for the 130 nm process, but could be ported to the current 180 nm process. They have done the same with their 130 nm process as well. So yes, AMD and Intel do improvements to their processes to increase the cost efficiency, as well as the performance. But they do not announce these changes as "we are moving to an advanced 110 nm process!"
Also, AMD barely has enough fab space to produce large quantities of their Athlon 64 and Athlon XP processors. Right now supplies are very tight for these chips across the world, and AMD cannot make enough of them. Why would AMD try to sell off some of their fab space to another 3rd party when they can't produce enough of their own chips? Dresden is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no room for a 3rd party design to be produced there, plus AMD probably would not want to take on the risk of doing foundry work.
Also, AMD barely has enough fab space to produce large quantities of their Athlon 64 and Athlon XP processors. Right now supplies are very tight for these chips across the world, and AMD cannot make enough of them. Why would AMD try to sell off some of their fab space to another 3rd party when they can't produce enough of their own chips? Dresden is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no room for a 3rd party design to be produced there, plus AMD probably would not want to take on the risk of doing foundry work.
When that fab opens up, AMD is going to need to squeeze every cent out of every processor it puts out just to pay for it.
Unless Nvidia is willing to pay five hundred+ dollars per GPU core, AMD is most likely better off not retooling its line between CPUs and GPUs.
Unless Nvidia is willing to pay five hundred+ dollars per GPU core, AMD is most likely better off not retooling its line between CPUs and GPUs.
It was rumored that AMD had some tentative plans with one of the foundries a while back, but I don't think they ever amounted to anything.
I don't know the reasons, but I'm pretty sure all Athlon chips are produced in AMD fabs. Used to be both in Austin and Dresden, now only Dresden.
There might be a restriction in the cross-licensing agreement they have with Intel that keeps them from outsourcing production, and perhaps AMD also decided it wouldn't make enough money to justify the overhead of getting another fab tooled to properly make Athlons, along with having to gift a bit of IP and distribution problems.
I don't know the reasons, but I'm pretty sure all Athlon chips are produced in AMD fabs. Used to be both in Austin and Dresden, now only Dresden.
There might be a restriction in the cross-licensing agreement they have with Intel that keeps them from outsourcing production, and perhaps AMD also decided it wouldn't make enough money to justify the overhead of getting another fab tooled to properly make Athlons, along with having to gift a bit of IP and distribution problems.
Yeah, AMD and UMC had an agreement, and were even on the verge of building a FAB together in Singapore. These things fell through though. The biggest problem with a 3rd party manufacturer getting into the Athlon business is that it would take an inordinate amount of work to get the Athlon design (which was originally designed around AMD's 130 nm process) to not only work on UMC's 130 nm process, but also run as fast as it would need to. I think in the end AMD thought that it would be more expensive to outsource their parts, then it is to lose some business by not being able to meet demand.
