I think you had too much Samsung/GloFo KoolAid
Everyone in the industry is going towards TSMC for 16FF+. Its easy to see on the customer amounts. But it will be very obvious later in 2016.
From AT's article, this should be quite clear for anyone who has paid attention to AMD & Glofo for the past several years.
In the last financial, AMD had to pay GloFo for un-used wafers due to their contracts. With APUs not being able to keep up in volume, AMD needs dGPU chips being made from GloFo.
The question would be why they would source from TSMC..
With Samsung touting their alternate process, 14ff enhanced power node, clock speed or high TDP GPU is a non-issue.
Thus, the logical answer would be GloFo is incapable of producing a big die on 14ff with decent yields.
But why would TSMC be any better at it? There's rumbling from unhappy SOC customers that their small dies aren't yielding well on TSMC 16nm ff...
Add two together, the big-chip next-gen sounds like a long way away.
Did they have working units? An announcement isn't the same thing as actual operating hardware.
Everyone in the industry is going towards TSMC for 16FF+. Its easy to see on the customer amounts. But it will be very obvious later in 2016.
IIRC, Apple was even approaching Samsung to produce chips because they were not happy with yields at TSMC, this was awhile ago last year.
A9X is TSMC only. A9 was supposed to be GloFo+Samsung. But ended up being Samsung+TSMC. A10 will be TSMC only using 16FF+(16FFC perhaps).
But look at it in a good way, this means higher end products wont be at a node disadvantage to NVidia. And you get higher performing AMD parts in the top.
Without the WSA, I doubt AMD would get all its chips made anywhere but TSMC.
Yes, they announced PX 2 with two Pascal GPUs, but they shown a "PX 2" board with 2 GTX 980M attached in MXM slotsNot really a head start, NVIDIA just hours ago just announced Drive PX 2 with two Pascal GPUs on board as well as two new Tegra chips...with Pascal GPUs integrated.
I think they aim with this chip is to dive into the "i have a cheapo psu, cant have more than 200w without PEG 6 pin" crowd" segment, both in prebuilt and DYI variants.Their lineup desperately needs a low-end solution with a massive leap in efficiency.
The 950 and 960 are owning them, despite how strong the 380/X are in performance. For many systems, the power use of these GPUs, even the 370/X class is just too high and their only option is a 750Ti or 950/960. I know this first hand since I recently upgraded a friend's rig, some crap Dell thing with a 240W PSU that's really awful.
IF either AMD or NV release a huge chip on 14/16ff early, it would be the surprise. I think everyone understands how much more sensible it is to test the waters on an un-proven node tech with smaller chips. Certainly for consumer GPUs that do not enjoy the HPC $ margins.
The demoed Polaris, ~30W GPU with that kind of performance profile is absolutely a winner.
And there's absolutely no politics involved at all in Apple wanting to direct custom away from Samsung? And we know how the processes compare across the whole range from mobile SoCs to 3GHz+ high end CPUs?
There are a ton of variables, and anyone who pretends to know what to expect is FUDing. Wait for the parts, wait for the data, and then we can argue to our hearts' content
Trying to keep a straight face here, but do you actually believe this?Sorry, for derailing the head, but no. Apple and Samsung lately have much better relationship, more partner like, than competitor, and supplier at the same time.
A gamer doesn't care about how much power it uses...it does not matter if the best AMD card used 1 watt of power, if the nvidia care used 250watt but was faster they will still get nvidia for games.
I think you had too much Samsung/GloFo KoolAid
Everyone in the industry is going towards TSMC for 16FF+. Its easy to see on the customer amounts. But it will be very obvious later in 2016.
Trying to keep a straight face here, but do you actually believe this?
Do you think if any of those companies could make the other one disappear they wouldn't do it instantly?
A9X is TSMC only. A9 was supposed to be GloFo+Samsung. But ended up being Samsung+TSMC. A10 will be TSMC only using 16FF+(16FFC perhaps).
But look at it in a good way, this means higher end products wont be at a node disadvantage to NVidia. And you get higher performing AMD parts in the top.
Without the WSA, I doubt AMD would get all its chips made anywhere but TSMC.
I see AMD still does not understand gamers. Hopefully that test was just to show power requirements and not a actual "we are better at gaming" test. A gamer doesn't care about how much power it uses...it does not matter if the best AMD card used 1 watt of power, if the nvidia care used 250watt but was faster they will still get nvidia for games.
AMD does this all the time, its all about saving power for them, or new technology that no one actually uses in real world.
Somewhere down the line they turned into the guy on the block that buys a Alienware computer and says its better than anyone else.
Why do you dislike Samsung and GloFlo so much? Do you feel that they're just worse at making chips?
You can try dismiss the reality as much as you like. It got nothing to do with me no matter how hard you keep trying post after post. The customer portfolio says it along with the results.
Surely you're intelligent enough to realize "customer portfolio' is a function of many factors.You can try dismiss the reality as much as you like. It got nothing to do with me no matter how hard you keep trying post after post. The customer portfolio says it along with the results.
It was a legimate question. Do you feel that going with them will ultimately hurt Polaris and leave it at a disadvantage?
It was a legimate question. Do you feel that going with them will ultimately hurt Polaris and leave it at a disadvantage?