Worrying rumors has circulated the web that both AMD and NVIDIA will miss the preliminary launch dates for 2011 thanks to problems at TSMC and GlobalFoundries. AMD denies this and says it will launch the next generation graphics architecture this year and it will reveal more about it soon.
AMD’s next generation architecture is called Southern Islands will be part of the HD 7000 series, as long as it doesn’t change the naming scheme. Certain pages have speculated wildly that both AMD and NVIDIA will miss the launch in 2011 because of problems at GlobalFoundries and TSMC, but also that companies has chosen to invest in FoU elsewhere.
“In a couple of days you are going to hear about our exciting new graphics architecture that will be coming out later this year and will be utilized by our future APUs,” Rick Bergman, AMD.
These rumors are false and while we await a date for the architecture it will launch before the new year. This implies that both TSMC and GlobalFoundries, or at least one of them, is on schedule for the first 28nm HKMG process. Considering 28nm will enable AMD and NVIDIA to double the transistor density and lower power consumption NVIDIA are just as interested as AMD to move over to the new process.
GF110 with 3.05 billion transistors in 520mm2, the biggest chip ever at 40nm
Samsung also has a foundry since a number of years, and it has said that it is preparing designs with 5 billion transistors and more at 28nm, which makes us think that both AMD and NVIDIA will be in those regions. Currently AMD Cayman sports 2.64 billion transistors while NVIDIA GF110 has 3.05 billion at 40nm.
Source: XbitLabs
