Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the worlds largest contract maker of chips, said on Thursday that it had initiated mass production of chips using 20nm process technology, about a month ahead of its plan. It is unknown which chips are now in production, but it is known that the new process technology will allow to make very complex SoCs with increased performance and low power consumption.
Earlier TSMC indicated that the first five products to be made using 20nm fabrication process were designed for mobile computing, CPU and PLD [programmable logic device] industries.
1 month ahead of schedule means nothing as the usual forecast for 20nm GPUs was Q3.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/..._Regarding_16nm_FinFET_and_20nm_Progress.htmlSpecifically on 20nm we have received five product tape-outs and scheduled more than 30 tape-outs in this year and next year from mobile computing, CPU and PLD [programmable logic device] segments. And all those tape-outs represent big volumes. Design ecosystem on 20nm has been validated in real products and is ready to support customers. Yield learning is in line or better than the 28nm path. We expect a fast ramp of 20nm next year, with revenue from 20nm in 2014 bigger than that of 28nm in 2012. You see 20nm will be starting next year whereas 28nm actually started in the fourth quarter – third, fourth quarter of 2011. So the corresponding point for 28nm was 2012. But our ramp in 20nm in 2014 is going to be faster than the ramp for 28nm in 2012. While our 28nm ramp was a record for TSMC, 20nm ramp will be even faster by about 30%,” said Mr. Chang.
1 month ahead of schedule means nothing as the usual forecast for 20nm GPUs was Q3. Take in mind that the article is talking about volume production, not mass production.
I have a link that is pretty positive regarding 20nm
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/..._Regarding_16nm_FinFET_and_20nm_Progress.html
Do you have a link handy? That seems quite vague.
TSMC is not planning on opening up their 20 nm HKMG planar based lines until Q1/Q2 2014 with product being delivered in a Q3 timeframe.
TSMC expects to be able to provide mass quantities of these parts by Q3 2014, but that is not entirely set in stone. My gut feeling here is that TSMC will be pretty close to that timeline and we would expect to see 20 nm GPUs hitting the market in around a year from now.
Everybody wins if 20nm comes faster!
28nm reached volume production, October 24th 2011
20nm reached volume production, January 16th 2014
Nvidia`s 28nm Kepler saw its first light in late March 2012. 5 months after 28nm mass production started.
Yields were horrible on 28nm for Nvidia.
20nm production will be 30% faster than 28nm production according to TSMC.
So likely the upcoming 750 ti...