AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

[Heinz68]

No one outright lies in this industry but PR is all about selective truth telling...and of course a fair amount of embellishment by certain publications in order to give a certain voice to articles.

TSMC cancelled their 32nm process. Why should anyone need to know more? Even the shareholders usually get a warmed-over version. There are so many stories within stories that the real truth is hardly ever so simple.

I am not saying that AMD's dropping of their lower-end 32nm cards was the end-all for 32nm but rather one of the main contributing factors to TSMC's re-evaluation of their roadmap.

In the past, it has been ATI's cards that have very much been route proving products for TSMC's High Performance lines. We saw this with 40nm, 55nm, etc. The manufacturing relationship between ATI (now AMD) and TSMC allowed for a mutually beneficial roll-out procedure that ended up benefiting clients like NVIDIA as well.

So yeah, there were probably other economic factors behind TSMC's shutting down 32nm fabrication before it even started producing anything past test wafers. However, loosing high volume parts from a major client likely had a massive impact.

All asked for was a for link or from where you have the info since your post was hard to believe.
I Googled "TSMC 32nm canceled" got many articles about the cancellation starting with our friend Charlie rumors. Still a good read.

Could not find anything about TSMC 32nm cancellation because off AMD canceling first, same as could not find that TSMC was ready with 32nm process as you said:

"Contrary to popular belief, TSMC didn't have issues with 32nm."

Finally I found the AnandTech, article which I believe describes the situation the best. Looks to me that Mr. Skynner was not "selective truth telling"

With the launch of the Barts GPU and the 6800 series, we touched on the fact that AMD was counting on the 32nm process to give them a half-node shrink to take them in to 2011. When TSMC fell behind schedule on the 40nm process, and then the 32nm process before canceling it outright, AMD had to start moving on plans for a new generation of 40nm products instead.

Does the above sounds like "TSMC didn't have issues with 32nm"?

The 32nm predecessor of Barts was among the earlier projects to be sent to 40nm. This was due to the fact that before 32nm was even canceled, TSMC’s pricing was going to make 32nm more expensive per transistor than 40nm, a problem for a mid-range part where AMD has specific margins they’d like to hit. Had Barts been made on the 32nm process as projected, it would have been more expensive to make than on the 40nm process

One more time. Does the above sounds like "TSMC didn't have issues with 32nm"?

Cayman on the other hand was going to be a high-end part. Certainly being uneconomical is undesirable, but high-end parts carry high margins, especially if they can be sold in the professional market as compute products (just ask NVIDIA). As such, while Barts went to 40nm, Cayman’s predecessor stayed on the 32nm process until the very end. The Cayman team did begin planning to move back to 40nm before TSMC officially canceled the 32nm process, but if AMD had a choice at the time they would have rather had Cayman on the 32nm process.

The bottom line is, if there was no issue with the 32nm process, Cayman would be a little beast, actually the same applies to Bart.

Talking about Issues, there are few rumors that TSMC also has problem with 28nm process and there are going to be some delays.