AMD may be unveiling its first 28 nm graphics chips before the end of the year.
Industry sources told Germany's heise online that AMD is targeting December 6 as a launch date.
There was no information which architecture these new GPUs will be based on, but there appears to be reason to believe that AMD may be unveiling performance desktop boards, which will become available in very limited quantities in December, heise said. Due to 28 nm transition problems, it may take some time until there is enough supply to meet demand.
If heise's sources are correct, then we assume that the announcement in December will be about AMD's Southern Island GPU family, which is expected to be called the Radeon HD 7000 series. We are expecting these GPUs to use Rambus' XDR2 DRAM memory instead of GDDR5, MIMD instructions instead of VLIW, support for PowerTune as well as x86 addressing and Partially Resident Textures.
TSMC reportedly increased its pricing for 28nm products as it noticed substantially higher demand than the company initially expected. Xbit labs speculated that TSMC's capacity for 28nm wafer production is only 7000 to 10,000 units during the current fourth quarter.
This isn't the first time we've heard about the Radeon HD 7000 series though. Read more about the AMD Radeon HD 7900 and XDR2 here.
Agreed, with BF3 out I need to upgrade asap and it would be nice to get the latest and greatest. I know the 6000 series isn't that old, but I really don't want to buy one now if a new series is just around the corner!
Prices increase when demand increases in the short run because of limited supply. In the long run increased demand will lower prices when the market adjusts to increase overall production and takes advantage of economies of scale, but in the short run economies of scale in production cannot be realized and prices will be bid up by demanders for the limited supply of a good.
In simpler terms, for the time being TSMC can only produce a certain amount of 28nm wafer and people want more than they can produce, so they raise the price because they can make more profit. If demand for 28nm wafer stays high then they will expand their production capabilities, meaning they'll have more to sell and in order to sell all of it they'll need to lower price.
Yay economics!
Nevermind that the cost of regulation is almost solely in hired labor to keep up with it, but supposedly if they could save money by firing those people, they could then take same said money and use it to hire even more people, even though demand won't suddenly increase to require more production. In addition, we could also enjoy the benfits of lead, mercury and asbestos being re-added to everything, and skyrocketing cancer rates near factories.
Everything I've seen so far points to the HD7900 series launching in Q1 2012 at the earliest.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/28nm-NVIDIA-Kepler-GPU-Samples-Now-Shipping-224370.shtml
except youre completely wrong
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/the-cost-of-doing-business-in-the-us-1031/
AMD, I want a 7990 for my Birthday
just bought a HD6970 assuming the next gen wasn't due until early 2012.
Well... december 6th is too late for Skyrim anyway
I don't think it will fail. It has all the right parts: A die shrink that lowers power consumption greatly, more SP uints, faster memory bandwidth, higher clocked stock core and some new features.
If anything the HD7900 series should give better performance at a lower power rating. The HD7800 series and lower will be refreshes of the HD6K series but will as well use much less power.
The only thing worse than that article is you choosing to link it at all. I don't see anything in that article that suggests anything other than the cost being labor, or "technical expertise" as they put it, which means, subject matter experts, aka: people who don't need welfare because they make enough money to pay for their own house.
the 6 k was a refresh of the 5k, i though that the 7 k would be new arcetecture?