AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

[Heinz68]

Contrary to popular belief, TSMC didn't have issues with 32nm. It was dropped for economic reasons after AMD decided to transfer Cozumel and Kauai to 40nm. There were still plans to do Ibiza at 32nm (likely where the 1920 SP rumor came from) but those fell through when TSMC no longer saw a point in pushing a manufacturing process which very few companies would pick up on.


AMD's lineup would have looked like this on 32nm:

Ibiza
Cozumel
Kauai


Instead we are getting 4 products:

Cayman
Barts
Turks
Caicos


Basically, they are now able to better cover the market with cards using a more mature process while costs are kept to a minimum. Suits me fine.

Any links about that, I can't Google any but there are plenty reports about TSMC 32nm cancellation. Personally I believe TSMC cancelled the node because of so much problem with 40nm and GLobalFoundries announcing to work on 28nm.

The bottom line is, if GLobalFoundries got successful 28nm process against the TSMC 32nm than TSMC could have even loose the Nvidia business. They sure could not afford that.

Here is what AMD Vice President and General Manager of AMD's GPU Division said according to bit-tech

Mr. Skynner admitted that the HD 6000 series was originally set to use TSMC's 32nm process, but that AMD had to opt back to 40nm earlier this year after that process was unceremoniously dumped by TSMC in favour of concentrating on 28nm only.

I don't think Skynner lied about it, after all they still need TSMC

EDIT
If TSMC cancelled the 32nm because of AMD, why wouldn't the TSMC say so? Or did they? If they did that sure is a big new news.