TSMC Says 40nm Issues are Resolved

News
By Marcus Yam
published

Bring on the production lines for more GPUs!

Have you noticed any improvement in supplies of the ATI Radeon 5800-series of video cards? That's likely due to the increasing yield of 40nm production at fabrication house Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Mark Liu, Senior VP of Operations at TSMC, said that the chamber matching problems that had impacted yield rates for the company's 40nm node have been resolved, according to Digitimes.

Now TSMC's yield for 40nm product is at the same level as its 65nm product, signaling clear skies. This should be positive news for Nvidia, as its Fermi product is expected to utilize the 40nm process.

Read more about Fermi in our architecture preview.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
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25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • scook9
    screw fermi, this is good news for all the people who were going to have to pay the jacked up prices for ATI 5000 cards
    Reply
  • WheelsOfConfusion
    So prices for 40nm ATI parts should drop? If the 4770 actually came down to $99, would it still be a good deal?
    Reply
  • buckinbottoms
    let the 5890's flow!
    Reply
  • brett1042002
    +1 5890 please
    Reply
  • NapoleonDK
    I was a lucky adopter of the HD4770 for $98.99 back in the day. Too bad it was so quickly beaten in the price/perf when the price shot up. It's still a great card IMO, obvious lack of DX11 technologies aside.

    What are TSMC's yields right now anyway? 65nm has been around for quite a while now, shouldn't they have it up past 80% or so? Does that mean 40nm is SERIOUSLY 80%?!?! That would be awesome, 5870 here I come!
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    hopefully with this the availability of the 5970 will ramp up and the cost can begin to come down, still having trouble finding them in stock. for the most part I'm seeing prices between $650 - $700 for stock cards, when they're available.
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    yess i knew it!! te hd 5850's are all hovering around $300, we'll be back at MSRP at no time!!!
    Reply
  • FoShizzleDizzle
    It will help Fermi, but not really because this also helps the production and price of Cypress. Even more so the latter because of the smaller die. If you know anything about basic statistics you would understand that their significantly larger die size will result in much lower yield than Cypress for the obvious reason of fewer per wafer, and the not as obvious reason which is a higher failure rate as you increase the size.

    It is going to be pretty unaffordable to say the least, and on top of that be a power hog. If it performs anything less than 50% better than Cypress, it is a failure in my book and many others.
    Reply
  • scooterlibby
    All of you celebrating lack of Fermi realize the above MSRP prices of the 5xxx series is largely a combination of two things:

    1. The supply issues from TSCMC
    2. The lack of competition from Nvidia (i.e. the delay of Fermi)

    If you think we're going to get miraculous price drops because problem 1 has cleared up, you are mistaken. Lack of competition is still driving the high prices. That's why even the MSRP of the 5xxx is a bit high.

    I like both companies, but especially when they are competing and driving down prices. Remember how great the price wars were with the last gen? You can't get that without both Fermi and 5xxx series duking it out at the same time.

    Reply
  • scooterlibby
    my apologies for writing TSCMC instead of TSMC
    Reply