Tuesday, April 24th 2012
NVIDIA Wants 450 mm Wafers, Seeking Foundry Partnership with GlobalFoundries, Samsung
NVIDIA is formulating a long-term chip manufacturing strategy that will see its interests secure by the time chip manufacturing has moved on to 14 nm (which follows 20 nm and today's 28 nm), which could arrive around 2015. Chip manufacturing by foundry partners is a potentially major irritant for NVIDIA, which wants to see wafer sizes getting increased from the current 300 mm manufacturing at TSMC, to 450 mm, and fast. TSMC will achieve 450 mm (18-inch) wafer manufacturing capability only by 2015. Another irritant for NVIDIA is TSMC's change in business model, which charges fabless customers "per wafer manufactured", rather than "per working chip yielded", giving them what they perceive to be the shorter end of the stick. NVIDIA is thus rigorously evaluating other foundry partners. We know from a slightly older report that Samsung has sent NVIDIA test chips manufactured at its Austin, Texas facility. There is talk that NVIDIA could also seek partnerships with GlobalFoundries, of which AMD recently relinquished all its stakes on. NVIDIA needs reliable, high-volume foundry partners that can keep it competitive not just with its main business of GPUs, but also a potential gold mine that is application processors.
Source:
VR-Zone
7 Comments on NVIDIA Wants 450 mm Wafers, Seeking Foundry Partnership with GlobalFoundries, Samsung
nV had a splendid per-chip deal that let them sail through Fermi times. Now that the old contract is over TSMS wants to make some of it's money back. It's natural for nV to want larger wafers in this case.
It's a here's your wafer, if you find bushels of lemons it's your problem. TSMC is not affected by Nvidia choosing to run with their HP HkMG process to grab the theoretical clock/efficiency touted by the new gate design. I think Nvidia got snookered one to many times by TSMC.
AMD kept with the more traditional 28Nm LP process, and their normal price per wafer, although they got the same 28Nm price hike. AMD now since TSMC stopped to fix the production problems are delivering decent yields, so now AMD can reflect that in their pricing.
Samsung Can Do Miracles !