Disappointing, but oh well things do happen and what with chips on an ever shrinking die its just making it more and more difficult for them to keep up.

Not like this is to big a deal of course, either way the next generation will still be a good improvement all around anyway.

 

The same manufacturer for two biggest competitors - bad news for the market and for the end user. It stinks with stagnant technology and likely price fixation.

 

It's a nuisance really, we're sure to get stripped down models but unfortunately prices won't be stripped to match.

 

How about Nvidia asking intel's foundry (make partnership) to produce their new-20nm-Maxwell GPUs?

 

Better yet, 14nm

 

It's a nice thought, and may one day be in Intel's model, but for now they'd prefer to sell you their advanced technology one chip at a time. I suppose if the CPU market dries up at some point Intel could always pimp out their FABs and still make a killing.

 

Intel is already contracting the fabrication process out to others.

Intel to Play Fab for an ARM Chipmaker: Understanding What the Altera Deal Means

Using words like "pimp out", is that the only words you could think of?

 

Conflict of interest. Intel's Xeon Phi math co-processors compete in the same high profile GPGPU markets as Nvidia's Tesla, and to a lesser degree AMD's FirePro and Sky

Oddly enough, TSMC is a paragon of virtue amongst the sea of corruption that is Chinese/Taiwanese business. I think they are one of the few companies that actively disassociate themselves from institutional bribery.
On the other hand, they are the largest semiconductor foundry business around so do get to set their prices in somewhat of a vacuum, although from what I gather, wafer prices are in line with other fabs (~$3000-3500 for a 28nm wafer, ~$6000 for a 20/16nm wafer initially which will drop by ~25% as the process matures if other process nodes are any indication). Globalfoundries (and possibly UMC) signing up for Samsung's FinFET process licenses should ensure a little more competition and availability relatively soon.

 

@DBZ
Morals and 'business interests' doesn't always go hand in hand (especially when significant financial gains are involved), and to that extent I'll give western weapons manufacturers an edge since they are pretty 'good' at making the 'right deals', recent examples: remember bofors & augusta submarines etc.

 

so, that means nvidia will skip maxwell

 

No, just that Maxwell might be split over 28nm and 16nm. The first Maxwell parts are already available (the GM 107 based desktop GTX 750/750 Ti, and 850M/860M mobile, and GM 108 based mobile 830M/840M).

Nvidia's performance segment boards (GTX 770/760) will be a little long in the tooth by the time the Christmas holiday season rolls around - especially when you consider that they are minor tweaks of a series that debuted in March 2012, so it makes sense to push out a replacement on a known/proven process. The Chinese New Year production shutdown means that if you don't get product out in Nov-Jan, then you're pretty much stuck until March.

It also makes sense (if you can afford it and have wafer allocation) to run the architecture at 28nm since it becomes a relatively low risk option to optically shrink the design for a smaller node while incorporating any revisions into the metal layers. The big GPU successor to GK 110 (Titan/GTX 780/K6000/K40) will certainly be made on the smaller 16nm FinFET process.