R400/R500 guessing game

Yes, effectively since late '01 now. Better be good.

MuFu.

 

Geez, since late '01? It usually takes about 2 years to go from initial planning to market, doesn't it? Therefore, it could quite easily be on the market early next year (bloody hell!!!!). I thought it was supposed to be 0.09 um though, so the question is, who's going to manufacture it? Intel is only going to 0.09 um at the end of this year with Prescott, and they seem so far ahead in terms of fabbing compared to everyone else. So I'm assuming that 0.09 um won't be ready until the middle of next year, at a guess. Unless Intel is going to fab for ATi....... Thoughts?

 

> Intel is only going to 0.09 um at the end of this year with Prescott,
> and they seem so far ahead in terms of fabbing compared to
> everyone else.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. All the major merchant-foundries (IBM, UMC, TSMC, TI, LSI, etc.) have demonstrated 'working silicon' at the 90nm node. IBM and UMC are pretty close to ramping up production 90nm silicon of Xilinx's FPGAs.

...

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_product.jsp?title=cost_device

Xilinx's pages a series of article-links regarding their push to 90nm technology. Each article has a slightly different bit of useful info.

According to Xilinx, the both IBM and UMC's (300mm) 90nm lines will produce some of the same products, implying Xilinx targeted two foundries for the at least one of its low-end product-lines. Xilinx's high-end FPGAs will remain with IBM.

But as NVidia learned, going from 'working silicon' to 'successful customer tape-out' could be a slam-dunk or a never-ending nightmare, depending on the customer's design. In terms of physical-design, FPGAs are so far removed from HDL-design (as in 'completely custom logic'), that these tech-demos are completely irrelevant to the casual foundry customer.

I doubt Intel will fab such a complex part for ATI. Recently, Intel opened a 'design services' division, which some industry analysts viewed as a potential baby-step into the merchant foundry arena. But 3-4 months Intel closed the group, and the next day IBM once again (loudly) trumpeted their own foundry capabilities and services. Intel's CPU-business keeps its fabs fully occupied, so I doubt they'd have any (worthwhile) excess to sell. They would make less money selling foundry capacity versus churning on Pentium4s and (gasp) Itaniums. IBM wanted the PowerPC to dominate the world... and *coincidentally*, they have excess (advanced) foundry capacity to sell. (Ok, that's kind of a trollish remark.)

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030428S0038 - Sony sets investment strategy for 65 nm, 300 mm. A paragraph hints that Sony's new fab could be used to build a lot of ASICs that it's now buying from outside suppliers.

 

What about NEC
http://www.necel.com/en/process/ux6.html
any special reason they´re not an option?

IIRC the Matrox G4xx line was fabbed at NEC.

(and what to think of their eDram tech?)

 

> What about NEC
> http://www.necel.com/en/process/ux6.html
> any special reason they´re not an option?

Good question! I'm not really a foundry expert, I just regurgitate tidbits of info I hear from my coworkers. (Hopefully this practice will make me an ASICnewbie and not an asicNEWBIE.) Frankly, I'm in no better a position to judge one foundry's merit against another. I think you can rank the final wafer price based on the level of design-services available at the given foundry.

On the one-end of the design-services spectrum, you had TSMC/UMC/SMIC/Charter, with the overall lowest pricing per wafer.

At the other-end, there's IBM/LSI/TI/NEC/Toshiba (and others I'm sure), with extensive in-house design/finishing-services, and a correspondingly higher cost per die/area.

That's just a rough rough guideline. In truth, the industry is evolving, and it's not a dichotomy like I presented above. From what my coworkers say, the Japanese fabs (NEC, Toshiba, Fujitsu, etc.) as a group have tended to be more expensive than TSMC/UMC.

My newbie-analysis on the ATI/NEC pairing breaks down like this:
NEC's main advantages (more extensive in-house design-services, packaging/testing) are less helpful to 'elite'-fabless companies like ATI/NVidia. The offered design-services aren't needed, because ATI/NVidia *already* have large in-house back-end design teams to deal with the physical-aspect of ASIC-design (the gate-placement , interconnect routing, design-for-test methodology, packaging/substrate design.) If ATI wanted to trim engineering staff, then I guess the foundry design-services would let them dismiss their own back-end design team (no need for redundancy.) The other design-services (like preverified IP libraries) again aren't signficicant factors, because ATI/NVidia end up having to design all their own I/O cells and analog blocks (RAMDACs, TMDS, DDR I/O, AGP I/O.) Some of the foundry library I/O-cells (AGP, DDR)could potentially replace the equivalent I/Os on ATI's GPUs, but the stuff like RAMDACs, dot-clock generators are very application specific, and it's better for ATI to design that themselves than to rely on someone else.

BUT...NEC is fabbing the Gamecube graphics ASIC for Nintendo, right? The implication is that Artx (now part of ATI) has a good working relationship with NEC. And Artx engineering team has already been integrated very well into ATI's engineering teams. Thus, if ATI were to hypothetically team up with NEC, this pre-existing business-relationship could be a key reason. From a engineering perspective, switching foundries is normally a HUGE risk, and for ATI to pick NEC would mitigate much of this risk and really give ATI a kickstart (compared to NVidia+IBM) in terms of ATI taping-out a design with NEC. (Since ATI is already familiar with NEC's design-flow methodology.)

ATI and Intel just seems unlikely to me. For one thing, Intel is a direct competitor in the PC-graphics market (albeit in the low-end, integrated-graphics market.) Yet I recall some joint agreement between the two companies for (low-end) integrated PC-graphics. So on the one hand, I see a potential conflict of interest between the foundry (Intel) and customer (ATI.) On the other hand, maybe the agreement includes an understanding that Intel won't suddenly deicde to jump into the GPU-market (like when they acquired Read3D.)

This above point is VERY important. LSI used to be the preferred foundry for fibre-channel (and gigabit ethernet) companies, because they were first to market with a (CMOS) gigabit transceiver core. In the olden days, the transceiver was a separate IC, on the expensive GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) process. As CMOS reached submicron, the top designers could target CMOS, and LSI demonstrated a working/verified core for their standard-cell ASIC products. Emulex, Qlogic, and others flocked to LSI for this competitve edge. (Adaptec had an analog design team, and developed their own CMOS transceiver.) Then, after fabbing and testing the production ASICs for its customers, LSI turned around and released its own SCSI and Fibre-channel host adapters, entering into direct competition with its customers. Emulex has already decided to switch foundries, and rumor is that Intel will eventually fab all of Emulex's future ASICs, starting at the 90nm node. (There's a press release on Emulex's website, but it only confirms a joint venture for single SATA product-line based on an Intel-supplied RISC CPU.) Qlogic is actively looking for a different foundry.

When TSMC keeps touting their 'pure-play foundry' model, that's exactly the scenario they're promising to avoid. UMC has non-trivial investments and ownerships in subsidiary chip companies. (For example, Mediatek. Mediatek basically killed Oak Technologies in the CD-RW controller market. UMC also dabbled in x86 compatible CPUs, made semiconductor memories, and chipsets at one time.) I think IBM, NEC, Toshiba are all clasified as integrated device mfgs (IDMs), which opens the possibility (however remote) that any of them could enter a customer's target market.

Personally, I don't understand the raitionality behind this fear. Apparently, it's understood (and accepted) that a pure-play foundry will fab chips for two customers in competition with each other. Yet for the foundry itself to be a competitor is frowned upon. My coworker says 'perception of conflict of interest', that a foundry somehow has access to the customer's sensitive design-properties through its handling of the customer's ASICs. I think it's an irrational fear, because there hasn't been a recent documented case of design-theft at a foundry.

Sorry I've gone off on a tangent...just trying to show that the art of choosing a fab goes beyond mere price/performance. There are many other factors, both political and technical, logical and irrational, that enter the decision process.

 

Doesn't IBM fab Flipper?

 

Nope, NEC does.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

asicnewbie,

you´ve made some good points. Thx for the enlightenment.

 

I believe IBM fabs Gecko, the CPU of the GameCube?

 

That's Gieco

 

No, it's Gecko.

 

LOL good one..love those ads.

 

Geico?

 

OK, it is a US commercial for an insurance company named "Geico". The ad's "running gag" is a computer generated gecko who gets mistakenly called by people trying to reach the insurance company (gecko and the way the company says "Geico" sound similar).

A pretty decent little joke here, though I doubt it is the first time it has occurred to someone in a GameCube discussion. If you'd seen the commercials, you'd probably have chuckled as well, or atleast smiled.

 

Only thing I was smiling at is how they fumbled the name.

 

I don't think so T2k (although I'm not in the loop like these other guys). I think R360 (if we use the Inquirer name) is the chip that Dave is talking about, and should be out in around 2 months time. Loci is also known as R390 or R420. This should be out around Comdex time. It is supposed to go head to head with NV40, if my memory serves me correctly.

 

I didn't read the whole thread but I can't understand why some guys think that this test was unfair just because of FX5900 hadn't to use arb2. But isn't arb2 everything that ati can? I heard that these are the features r350 has and later became arb2-standard. FX5900 has just an specific path as it has more features than atis card has. Nn specific ati path wouldn't increase radeon-peformace cause arb2 is an ati path

Is that right?

 

It's only "unfair" as far as the 5800 Ultra goes - we can pretty much assume that's how it'll perform with the final build. It'll use the "NV30" path by default, which compromises precision but is probably the most balanced choice for the NV30 in terms of performance/IQ.

Although in these comparisons the NV35 uses the "NV30" path as well, its architectural advances compared with the NV30 allow it to run the ARB2 path at the same speed (or thereabouts). We can therefore assume that these results are a good indication of how the NV35 will perform with the final build using the ARB2 path.

ARB2 (not to be confused with OGL 2.0) is vendor-independent, but was particularly suited to the capabilities of the R300/R350. Now nVidia have "caught" up in this respect and I assume a proprietary path for either card would be of little benefit.

MuFu.