TSMC's R&D boss addresses 40-nm yields, high-k, litho

[qcmadness]

If TSMC is not able to fulfill orders for both ATi and nVidia, they will have to produce chips for the company they have a more solid contract with. My bet would be on nVidia since they have far more market share and are a much larger source of income for TSMC.



TSMC has been producting .40nm chips for ATi months before consumers were able to purchase them... and much of those 1 million chips were manufactured before December while yields were very low. This is why I've always maintained the opinion that ATi jumped the gun just to get the crown for a while but forgot to remember that without profits, they wont be able to pay off all the R&D they're spending on very fast product cycles.

"Traditionally" TSMC befriends with ATi more because ATi is more willing to test on new process. But now AMD is tied to GF for future manufacturing.

[Nedjo]

" But now AMD is tied to GF for future manufacturing.

that actually isn't true.
in many occasions AMD executives confirmed that they're staying in business with TSMC, just as they've done it so far.

[qcmadness]

that actually isn't true.
in many occasions AMD executives confirmed that they're staying in business with TSMC, just as they've done it so far.

But the agreement between AMD and ATIC states that after 32nm / 28nm transition, AMD will go for GF and eventually hires GF to manufacture ALL AMD CPUs and GPUs.

http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/downlo...915755&sXBRL=1

Page 7

Wafer Supply Agreement. The Wafer Supply Agreement governs the terms by which we purchase products manufactured by GF. Pursuant to the Wafer Supply Agreement, we purchase, subject to limited exceptions, all of our microprocessor unit (MPU) product requirements from GF. If we acquire a third-party business that manufactures MPU products, we will have up to two years to transition the manufacture of such MPU products to GF. In addition, once GF establishes a 32nm-qualified process, we will purchase from GF, where competitive, specified percentages of our graphics processor unit (GPU) requirements at all process nodes, which percentages will increase linearly over a five-year period. At our request, GF will also provide sort services to us on a product-by-product basis.