So Polaris From GF has really Major Issue Yield.i think so.
XBone S isn't the radically new design though, that's Scorpio and it will be coming next year. By all indications they've just taken the existing APU, added 4K support and shrunk it. Since the original was made at TSMC, it would make sense that the refresh would also be earlier GCN and made at TSMC.
Now if Scorpio isn't new GCN4+ and made at GloFo, then I would start to really worry.
So Polaris From GF has really Major Issue Yield.i think so.
^ it's just for 4K video not gaming though. MS wants to be able to sell people 4K movies and TV.
It's nice to see that the S offers some minor quality bumps on a few existing titles:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/surprise-new-xbox-one-s-gpu-smooths-out-some-older-games/
So Polaris From GF has really Major Issue Yield.i think so.
Either that, GF not having enough capacity or OEM's eating up tons of chips.So Polaris From GF has really Major Issue Yield.i think so.
Partially accurate. While it's aimed for 4K movies, Microsoft has stated that the Xbox One S DOES upscale all games to a 4K resolution. While not the same thing as a native 4K resolution this is an improvement over what the current Xbox One is capable of in games. Not to mention the added clock speed and FPS increases..
This is news in that they are using TSMC, it wasn't a simple die shrink either, it has added features.
This tells us that AMD has people working on both TSMC's & GloFlo's (Sammy's) FinFets, and this does change the big picture of how are things being worked on at AMD.
It was assumed that GloFlo would be the only game in town, since they don't have the man power to have multiple teams working on multiple different processes and this turns out to be false.
If the consoles are going to keep using TSMC and their 16nm FinFets, and 4x0 line uses GloFlo, you can pretty much bet that AMD knows which process is better, and which fab AMD will be using for future products if one process is vastly superior to the other.
Either that, GF not having enough capacity or OEM's eating up tons of chips.
Why? This chip is basically a shrink of a chip already made at TSMC, would make sense to keep it there.
This is news in that they are using TSMC, it wasn't a simple die shrink either, it has added features.
This tells us that AMD has people working on both TSMC's & GloFlo's (Sammy's) FinFets, and this does change the big picture of how are things being worked on at AMD.
It was assumed that GloFlo would be the only game in town, since they don't have the man power to have multiple teams working on multiple different processes and this turns out to be false.
If the consoles are going to keep using TSMC and their 16nm FinFets, and 4x0 line uses GloFlo, you can pretty much bet that AMD knows which process is better, and which fab AMD will be using for future products if one process is vastly superior to the other.
Going 16nm FinFet (or 14nm) is NOT a simple "shrink" job. It is a new design from the bottom up.
While they can use the same logic from the older chips, actually designing said chip is very complex, and just because it was made at that foundry before doesn't help much, if at all.
This could also explain why Vega didn't launch yet, they were using the design team to fulfill their SoC orders...
If I could have a guess at why they have been using GF for the GPU's and TSMC for their semicustom SoC's, I would say it has something to do with AMD's wafer supply deals.
AMD has a wafer supply agreement, take-or-pay. That means they get their wafers, no matter the quality. Because both FinFET-nodes are still pretty immature, I guess the quality (yields) are quite varying.
Therefore the GF node is a good choice for the products where AMD can bin the chips differently to make different products (GPU's).
With TSMC, AMD has a per chip agreement, so they pay for working chips. Therefore the quality of these chips will be more consistent, which therefore should be better for the semi-custom products, as AMD cannot sell the canned chips elsewhere.