According to the latest reports, AMD will skip the problematic 20nm manufacturing node for their next-generation 'Arctic Islands' GPUs, which the company is expected to launch in 2016. Instead, Arctic Islands will progress directly to 14nm FinFET in the hope of attaining higher levels of efficiency.

Currently, all GPUs in the market are produced using a 28nm process, both from AMD and Nvidia. It's widely expected that AMD's upcoming Rx 300 line of GPUs, set to launch in a few months, will also be manufactured using a 28nm process due to a slew of issues with TSMC's 20nm node that have repeatedly delayed its introduction.

At this stage it's not known whether AMD will stick with TSMC and hope that their 14nm FinFET node is ready on time, or whether they'll switch to a company like Intel or Samsung, both of which have operational 14nm nodes. Currently the node is being used for CPU, SoC and NAND production, but it's expected to suit GPUs just as well.

Considering Arctic Islands is two generations away, details are a little scarce at this stage. With the move to 14nm, these graphics cards are expected to feature low TDPs, similar to Nvidia's Maxwell cards today. 'Greenland' is the codename for Arctic Islands' flagship GPU, which will come with an advanced design featuring SK Hynix's HBM2 memory.

For now though, AMD is focused on getting the Rx 300 line out the door, which should launch around Computex in June.