AMD’s graphics section ATI is currently preparing the Southern Island GPU architecture for launch in Q4. Even if Southern Islands is made with 40nm technology we may see 28nm circuits from AMD as early as the first half of 2011.
AMD will put greater emphasis on the native manufacturing partner GlobalFoundries over the coming years and the foundry has now revealed that by the end of 2010 the first products made at the 28 node will move out of the fab, and start mass production in 2011.
“The timing of when you’ll see products is customer-dependent but it’s possible you could see them in [the first half of 2011].”
AMD will move over its graphics circuit production to GlobalFoundries sooner or later and when the 28nm technology is available it seems highly plausible that a refresh of Southern Islands will arrive in the first half of 2011.
ATI Cypress
The big picture at AMD are still a bit hard to grasp. At the same time we know that TSMC is working to reach new nodes and NVIDIA is guaranteed to be searching for a more efficient manufacturing technology for its advanced Fermi architecture.
