Although there are rumours that Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia Corp. are not really happy with 20nm process technology of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., they will inevitably have to use it. A vice president of AMD said last week that the company’s 20nm chips would be out next year.
“20nm is an important node for us. We will be shipping products in 20nm next year and as we move forward […],” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and chief operating officer of AMD. “If you look at our business, it is quite a bit more balanced between the semi-custom, embedded, […] professional graphics […] as well as the more traditional sort of client and graphics pieces of our business. [20nm] technology plays in all of those businesses.”
This is not the first time when AMD outlines its plans to use 20nm process technology for its chips. However, this is the first time when AMD reveals that it will use the manufacturing process for graphics processing units, semi-custom accelerated processing units and embedded products. For some reason Ms. Su did not say whether AMD plans to make central processing units using 20nm process technology.
20nm process technology will help AMD to boost functionality and performance of its products. Besides, it will allow AMD to further cut down power consumption of its GPUs and semi-custom Fusion system-on-chips.
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KitGuru Says: It is noteworthy that neither AMD nor Nvidia try to be the first to adopt 20nm process technology. Apparently, TSMC’s prices for 20nm production are rather high, hence, fabless chip designers want to postpone adoption to ensure maximum yields and minimize the costs of their products.