Tuesday, December 22nd 2015
Samsung to Fab AMD "Zen" and "Arctic Islands" on its 14 nm FinFET Node
It has been confirmed that Samsung will be AMD's foundry partner for its next generation GPUs. It has been reported that AMD's upcoming "Arctic Islands" family of GPUs could be built on the 14 nanometer FinFET LPP (low-power Plus) process. AMD's rival NVIDIA, meanwhile, is building its next-gen "Pascal" GPU family on 16 nanometer FinFET node, likely at its traditional foundry partner TSMC.
It gets better - not only will Samsung manufacture AMD's next-gen GPUs, but also its upcoming "Zen" family of CPUs, at least a portion of it. AMD is looking to distribute manufacturing loads between two foundries, Samsung and GlobalFoundries, perhaps to ensure that foundry-level teething trouble doesn't throw its product launch cycle off the rails. One of the most talked about "Arctic Islands" GPUs is codenamed "Greenland," likely a successor to "Fiji." Sales of some of the first chips - GPUs or CPUs - made at Samsung, will begin some time in Q3 2016. Some of the other clients for Samsung's 14 nm FinFET node are Apple and Qualcomm. The company plans to speed up development of its more advanced 10 nm node to some time in 2017.
Source:
ETNews
It gets better - not only will Samsung manufacture AMD's next-gen GPUs, but also its upcoming "Zen" family of CPUs, at least a portion of it. AMD is looking to distribute manufacturing loads between two foundries, Samsung and GlobalFoundries, perhaps to ensure that foundry-level teething trouble doesn't throw its product launch cycle off the rails. One of the most talked about "Arctic Islands" GPUs is codenamed "Greenland," likely a successor to "Fiji." Sales of some of the first chips - GPUs or CPUs - made at Samsung, will begin some time in Q3 2016. Some of the other clients for Samsung's 14 nm FinFET node are Apple and Qualcomm. The company plans to speed up development of its more advanced 10 nm node to some time in 2017.
53 Comments on Samsung to Fab AMD "Zen" and "Arctic Islands" on its 14 nm FinFET Node
Sucks for Global Foundries but my guess is Global Foundries is going to keep AMD's console processor production.
AMD will likely even have a process advantage against NVIDIA. Things are really looking up for AMD right now. I hope they deliver.Already some of that happening in the ARM market.
Capacity won't be even remotely comparable. TSMC are very constrained for 16nm FF+. If AMD can get enough HBM2 and interposers, supply of Arctic Islands should be great (Zen too) ... Pascal may be little more than a dribble.
I was hoping AMD would switch to Samsung as their main foundry partner moving forward, and GF secondary, but didn't trust them to do so. My confidence in the new management has improved significantly now.
Interesting that GloFo and Samsung are going to be making Zen... Wonder if there will be any difference between the two chips, or if they're simply going to be fabbing some of Zen at Samsung, and some at GloFo (talking about parts of the product stack at each, not full stack at both).
but seriously, a closer partnership between the two companies (faster manufacturing traded for/with hardware design) would be sweet for both sides of the deal