Friday, October 14th 2011
AMD to Turn to TSMC for ''Bulldozer'' Manufacturing
AMD is rumored to be seeking ties with TSMC, Taiwan's premier semiconductor manufacturing foundry, for future manufacturing of its "Bulldozer" architecture processors, according to a report by DonanimHaber. This has two very distinct implications: first, AMD could be facing issues with GlobalFoundries 32 nm HKMG node, its de facto foundry for CPU manufacturing, and second, this could just be an obvious development of future low-power APUs based on the new x86 architecture being manufactured at TSMC, much like how current E-series and C-series APUs are.
Then again, AMD doesn't exactly have any APUs in works that use "Bulldozer" architecture for the x86 cores, rather, its successor codenamed "Piledriver". Another couple of important things to note here are that TSMC does not have a 32 nm bulk node (it was scrapped with the transition to 28 nm bulk), and its HKMG (high-K metal gate transistor) manufacturing technology is deployed rather recently. It would be interesting to follow this development.
Source:
DonanimHaber
Then again, AMD doesn't exactly have any APUs in works that use "Bulldozer" architecture for the x86 cores, rather, its successor codenamed "Piledriver". Another couple of important things to note here are that TSMC does not have a 32 nm bulk node (it was scrapped with the transition to 28 nm bulk), and its HKMG (high-K metal gate transistor) manufacturing technology is deployed rather recently. It would be interesting to follow this development.
28 Comments on AMD to Turn to TSMC for ''Bulldozer'' Manufacturing
Any time intel delves into something they know nothing about it results in utter and fantastic failure. Itanium was a hoot, too. It had some good design to it (came from HP), but instead of realizing its weakness and inevitable downfall they continued pumping billion after billion into it.
I hope they try to compete in the consumer graphics again with more than just integrated dog droppings. The billions streaming out of their bank account with zero gain makes me smile.
They were trying to dump them completely, but GloFo couldnt handle it all and thats the only reason TSMC is still producing AMD stuff.