TSMC 40nm shortage might last until 2Q 2010

User Comments: 35

1. December 4, 2009 11:17 AM
   buttus said:

   Nvidia is laughing at this as they try to catch up to AMD. Still though, chip shortages are keeping the prices too high.

   Reply
2. December 4, 2009 12:55 PM
   

   Vrmithrax, TechSpot Paladin, said:

   buttus said:

   Nvidia is laughing at this as they try to catch up to AMD. Still though, chip shortages are keeping the prices too high.

   Any laughter in the nVidia camp right now is probably nervous laughter as the consider the situation. Not only are they getting royally spanked on the benchmark front by ATi, but they also use TSMC as their supplier. So if those guys don't get their stuff together in a timely manner, the FERMI product launch will be as plagued with shortages as ATi's 5xxx stuff is now.

   Reply
3. December 4, 2009 2:01 PM
   levar said:

   @Guest thanks but I'm thinking if I should wait until next year to get a Radeon card, I haven't seen any major sites that have any 5k card currently out of stock. And intel isn't lacking any supplies?!

   Reply
4. December 4, 2009 2:28 PM
   Guest said:

   ATI will be using GlobalFoundaries next year and they are supposed to start fabbing the GPUs at 32nm. nVidia has already stated that they WILL NOT use GF. They are committed to TSMC per The Man. GF uses the same tech that IBM uses for bulk silicon. It has been proven.

   Indano

   Reply
5. December 4, 2009 2:33 PM
   

   dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

   captain828 said:

   slh28 said:

   Does anyone know if there are other manufacturers other than TSMC? Seems like there's a lack of supplier competition here.

   Of course there are others with 40nm ready: Intel ! :p

   Isn't Intel's process 45nm and 32nm (with 28nm next in line) ?

   Last time I checked Intel's Atom CPU was being fabricated by TSMC.

   GPU production accounts for 4% of TSMC's semiconductor business- I'm guessing that if Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Altera, AMD, LSI etc have ongoing contracts with TSMC then the business decisions were based on more than a coin-flip.

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6. December 4, 2009 2:36 PM
   

   klepto12, TechSpot Paladin, said:

   well i just hope that AMD comes out on top for once. Its just a shame that there arent more 5000 series cards for sell. just to let you guys know AMD is not the one who raises the price on there cards its the manufacturers who do that ahmm xfx , sapphire ,HIS and the like catch what im saying. TSMC is probably kicking there selves for not having there process ready for such a hot item

   Reply
7. December 4, 2009 3:49 PM
   ET3D, TechSpot Paladin, said:

   Puiu said:

   ET3D said:

   That's not good news, but since the lower end chips will be much less affected by low yields, ATI should still be able to get a lot of DX11 cards into the market, even if the high end doesn't sell as much as they'd like to.

   I'm pretty sure that they are able to sell everything they produce since they cards are really good and nobody expect nvidia to release fermi anytime soon.

   What I meant was that they're not selling as much as they'd like because they can't get the high end cards on the market. So yes, they're selling everything they produce, but if they yields were higher they'd sell more.

   Yields should be higher the less powerful the card, which is why 57x0 are easier to find, and 56x0 should be even more abundant. So they should be able to get quite a few DX11 games into gamers hands even without the high end yields. I hope that these low end cards will provide very good value for money, so that even people who don't need DX11 right now (which is most people) will buy them over similarly priced NVIDIA cards. That'd give game developers more incentive to use DX11.

   That said, although few people might expect to see Fermi soon, those waiting for NVIDIA will likely continue to wait for a while.

   Reply
8. December 4, 2009 4:46 PM
   alexandrionel said:

   Intel makes its own processors? )

   Reply
9. December 4, 2009 8:11 PM
   saintbodhisatva said:

   I guess this means prices wont taper for these new cards till about Q4 2010... bummer!

   Reply
10. December 4, 2009 8:27 PM
    

    dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

    Intel makes its own processors? )

    [link]

    Reply

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