Thats possible. But would maybe be a 300W card. But for an AMD version of Titan. Completely believeable.
One thing is sure, 20nm is not happening for another year.
It would maybe be a 200w TDP card too. Who knows? :awe:
But there is no guarantee that it's as bad as you say. It could just be outside of your mentioned "most cases". As for quantity, doesn't TSMC have more fabs/capacity doing 20nm risk production now than they had fabs doing 28nm risk production 2 years ago?
And finally - AMD doesn't really need many GPUs. FirePro is a very small market and the enthusiast segment ($500+ GPUs) as well. 10,000 GPUs would be perfectly sufficient for the beginning.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/TSMC-20nm-chip-manufacturing-goes-ahead-of-schedule_id41451
End of Q2 is June. That would give you 10s of thousands of wafers until Oct/Nov. Say AMD gets only a total of 1000 wafers at a miserable 20% yields for a 365mm2 GPU@20nm. That would give them 176*1000*0.2 GPUs, so 35200 in total. Way more than enough for a late and limited 2013 launch. If they sell their FirePros for $4000+ and their graphics cards for $500-700+, they likely would even make profits and good ones at that.
easy to say...produce links please.....
Just for the record again I am not saying there will be a 9970 20nm but I wouldn't close the door 100%.
If they're going on sale in September or October, there is absolutely no way they'll be 20nm.
Update 8/7/13 @ 4pm: AMD has clarified that it is the Hawaii/Volcanic Islands tech day in September, not the launch. The launch will officially happen in Q4 some time, the dates in this article are our speculation.
FWIW, I think its unknown when the hard launch date will be for the 9970 (R970?)for sure at this point.
FWIW, I think its unknown when the hard launch date will be for the 9970 (R970?)for sure at this point.
There will absolutely be no 20nm GPUs this year. None. What. So. Ever. And besides the logistics and timing of these new GPU's, even the big man Roy Read himself said AMD is going to start utilizing existing nodes more before moving onto more sophisticated ones.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1772992&postcount=188A lot of factors determine product release. Sometimes you don't need to look any further than the obvious to see timing; manufacturing.
So two options, AMD refreshes 28nm 4-5 months before 20nm ramp up, or AMD starts to talk about 20nm chips 4-5 months before they appear as 20nm chips?
Open questions to the forum members who are wise about processes- is there any new variant of 28nm available which offers higher performance/watt than the process the existing 28nm cards are made on? Some sort of SOI node, perhaps? Just because we're stuck with 28nm doesn't mean we won't necessarily get a performance boost.
We probably won't see 20nm chips in retail until April/May. Although it's possible some low volume product could be retail in March, if TSMC's schedule doesn't slip.
I suppose there's also the remote possibility Global Foundries actually put more money and engineers on 20nm which is partly why 28nm has been so delayed and AMD is getting 20nm GPUs from GF. Truly a long odds situation but it would certainly shake things up.
Why? It's clear that 20nm risk production exists as mentioned in the link a couple of posts earlier. Also, these decisions are made long in advance, years actually. It's not like Rory Read can come in and say "change everything right now, throw your work away and design this thing for 28nm instead". Maybe he was too late for this one and his decisions will rather affect the next generations.
Where is Global Foundries or this manufacturing alliance on 20nm, by the way? Someone hinted that it won't be on TSMC...
Exclusivity on test production? Why would they, when barely anyone else wants his fingers/wafers burnt? Apple is important to make up for the lack of early-adopters in a process too expensive for others to risk a financial mess when playing around!Given everything I have read, I think Apple will have 20nm exclusivity with TSMC for the first 2-3 months of 20nm wafer ramp ups simply because Apple can afford to buy up all the capacity,
Please, it's not a refresh, it's a relabel. Instead of releasing their big chip right away, this time they gave the fab some time to mature.and given that Nvidia began refreshing the Keplerin late May and June, I do not think we will see 20nm until May or June of next year AT MINIMUM.
20nm is costly, not to say significantly more costly than previous nodes and chips produced thereon. Hence it makes sense to either carefully go for small chips as pipe-cleaners (Apple) or go boldly for large chips that can be sold with above average margins (AMD -> firepro?).Technically it might not be impossible, but my post is conveying with as much certainty as possible that 20nm GPU's are not imminent given all the current information/rumors available.
Lol .. "Chang of TSMC said" .. if you believe statements from companies about themselves or their competition, then you must also believe that statement of GF:That's even more unlikely. Chang of TSMC is on record as saying they don't have much competition at 20nm, which means they probably don't. GF are likely 6 months to a year behind, so more like the end of 2014 for 20nm GF chips.
http://globalfoundries.com/newsroom/2013/20130530.aspx“As the developer of the industry’s first modular 14nm FinFET technology and one of the leaders at 20nm, we understand that enabling designs at these advanced process nodes requires innovative methodologies to address unprecedented challenges,” said Andy Brotman, vice president of design infrastructure at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.
These guys seem to have the thing. Hope some leaks are coming.
Its coming soon then. Once the guys at chiphell have it, it means AIBs (I know they have connections at Sapphire, Asus and Powercolor) have been given the cards to play around with.
My gut says no 20nm this year.. but we'll never know. AMD could have done a special deal with TSMC for early wafers. Exciting times ahead!