If you follow the American media, with their insistence to present both side of the story, you'd think that creationism and non-global warming are controversial but quite well accepted. However if you look at the scientific community, they are considered totally fringe theories. The former probably less than 0.1%, the latter a bit higher. While there are disagreements about particulars (as should be the case in any scientific framework), the central tenet is not in dispute.
Whenever I see these discussions about yield and process, I get that same feeling. Somehow a raging wing-nut has been able to convince a very significant faction that yield is largely under control of the fabless design house, that there are major differences between different fabless companies in D0 at the same fab, that there are large fabless companies in existence who throw a GDS2 file over the wall with little interaction with the fab, that TSMC would let an unmanufacturable GDS2 file slip through its extensive battery of acceptance checks, hell, just the fact itself that yields are a controversial issue that's worth millions of page clicks is just simply weird.
If anybody would advance these kind of conspiracy theories at a conference of experts, he'd be laughed out of the room.
Here's how things go instead: 'I heard the yield for process X are pretty low.' - 'Hmm, let's hope TSMC fixes this soon, because we are ready ship.' That's about it.
Take your typical small or mid-sized fabless company with COT flow. They send test chips on multi-project shuttles to the fan. They have monthly review meetings with TSMC. They have technical meetings with TSMC on a weekly based if all is going well and have very close cooperation whenever issues pop up. When a company sees a flaw in its way of working in their previous project, they sure as hell fix that for the next project.
So I'm asking you skeptics: if this is the way *any* mildly (or not) successful company that I've worked for operates, do you guys honestly believe the drivel that you read about one of the most successful fabless companies in existence ignoring all of that? I understand emotional attachment to one brand or the other, but the willingness to throw away just plain common sense with it really astounds me.
Look at UniversalTruth (a well chosen name if there ever was one) just as a example: he grudgingly is willing to accept that GF100A may have had a yield of not 2% but maybe 20%. I have no idea what his qualifications are, but 20% is shockingly bad for a process that was nicely on track to be one of the most successful ever by the time that chip went on to production. A 520+ mm2 chip is very large, but whenever Nvidia announces a product like that you read a ton of dismissive comments about 'they will never be able to produce this'. Of course, they can, it's a simply matter of fitting numbers in a model that has worked for 40 years. With 40nm what it was in 2010, it should be a piece of cake to yield GF100s at 60% or more.
I see conf call statements saying revenue/margin/whatever is a bit lower due to lower than expected yields. A totally pedestrian explanation about how financial results came to be, yet that gets converted into 'Nvidia shifts blame to TSMC.' They said in May 2010, 'results are better than expected due to yields coming in above expectations'. Can you at least be consistent and write 'Nvidia reserves seat in heaven for TSMC'? Nope, you get 'they are lying.' Just look 1 page back and see how history repeats itself.
Why all these whacky conspiracy theories? What does Nvidia have to gain by not telling the truth about the operational side of their business? The amount of hoops you have to go through to make the universe fit your viewpoint is so much more convoluted compared to what's stated publicly. I understand that an article called 'TSMC yields below expectations' will attract not as much eyeballs as 'raging incompetence at Nvidia', but this willingness of people to run with it?
Studies have shown that most supporters of any particular political party, when faced with hard evidence of a fact that doesn't match their world view, won't be convinced but simply tune out, ignore that fact, dig in deeper and resent whoever reports it. I'm pretty sure the same thing is at work here.
