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why ATI uses TSMC instead of global foundries
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sirmonkey1985
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because when the 5870 was put into production GF wasnt fabricating anything.. plus they want to do the 28nm fab which would cost twice as much to run a 40nm and 28nm fab side by side.. not to mention they probably had a contract signed years ago with TSMC to do the 40nm fab..
CaptNumbNutz
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They will be.
I think the simplest answer is GloFo still hasn't got their shit together yet.
To the best of my knowledge, GloFo is pushing hard to transition all their equipment to the 28nm and 22nm nodes to attempt to catch up to Intel. Whether they catch up or not is a whole other story. Most of the equipment they have is at the 65nm and 45nm nodes that they purchased from AMD and were using to make CPU's. The current ATI GPU's were designed years ago and tooled to work at 40nm, which GloFo doesn't even have production capability at. So rather than slow down GloFo's transition to the smaller nodes and wastefully spend money on a process that will soon be obselete, ATI is making their GPU's at 40nm with TSMC.
I think the simplest answer is GloFo still hasn't got their shit together yet.
To the best of my knowledge, GloFo is pushing hard to transition all their equipment to the 28nm and 22nm nodes to attempt to catch up to Intel. Whether they catch up or not is a whole other story. Most of the equipment they have is at the 65nm and 45nm nodes that they purchased from AMD and were using to make CPU's. The current ATI GPU's were designed years ago and tooled to work at 40nm, which GloFo doesn't even have production capability at. So rather than slow down GloFo's transition to the smaller nodes and wastefully spend money on a process that will soon be obselete, ATI is making their GPU's at 40nm with TSMC.
We will see the first chips from GF and ati the first half of this year. Northern islands will follow in the 2 half of the year.
GF could be a big win for ati as TSMC doesn't have their shit together and are way behind on processes. If GF gets them to 28nm first half of this year it will give them over a year's advantage on nvidia.
GF could be a big win for ati as TSMC doesn't have their shit together and are way behind on processes. If GF gets them to 28nm first half of this year it will give them over a year's advantage on nvidia.