Friday, September 8th 2017
AMD To Change Suppliers for Vega 20 GPUs on 7nm, HBM2 Packaging for Vega 11
AMD's RX Vega supply has seen exceedingly limited quantities available since launch. This has been due to a number of reasons, though the two foremost that have been reported are: increased demand from cryptocurrency miners, who are looking towards maximizing their single node hashrate density through Vega's promising mining capabilities; and yield issues with AMD's Vega 10 HBM2 packaging partner, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE). It's expected that chip yield for Vega 10 is also lower per se, due to it having a 484 mm² die, which is more prone to defects than a smaller one, thus reducing the amount of fully-enabled GPUs.
AMD's production partner, GlobalFoundries, has historically been at the center of considerations on AMD's yield problems. That GlobalFoundries is seemingly doing a good job with Ryzen may not be much to say: those chips have incredibly small die sizes (192 mm²) for their number of cores. It seems that Global Foundries only hits problems with increased die sizes and complexity (which is, unfortunately for AMD, where it matters most).
Due to these factors, it seems that AMD is looking to change manufacturers for both their chip yield issues, and packaging yield problems. ASE, which has seen a 10% revenue increase for the month of August (not coincidentally, the month that has seen AMD's RX Vega release) is reportedly being put in charge of a much smaller number of packaging orders, with Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL), who has already taken on some Vega 10 packaging orders of its own, being the one to receive the bulk of Vega 11 orders. Vega 11 is expected to be the mainstream version of the Vega architecture, replacing Polaris' RX 500 series. Reports peg Vega 11 as also including HBM2 memory in their design instead of GDDR5 memory. Considering AMD's HBM memory history with both the original Fury and and now RX Vega, as well as the much increased cost of HBM2's implementation versus a more conventional GDDR memory subsystem, this editor reserves itself the right to be extremely skeptical that this is true. If it's indeed true, and Vega 11 indeed does introduce HBM2 memory to the mainstream GPU market, then... We'll talk when (if) we get there.
As to its die yield issues, AMD is reported to be changing their main supplier for their 7 nm AI-geared Vega 20 from GlobalFoundries to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), who has already secured orders for AI chips from NVIDIA and Google. TSMC's 7nm and CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) capabilities have apparently proven themselves enough for AMD to change manufacturers. How this will affect AMD and GlobalFoundries' Wafer Agreement remains to be seen, but we expect AMD will be letting go of some additional payments GlobalFoundries' way.
Sources:
DigiTimes on Vega 11, DigiTimes ASE, DigiTimes on vega Shortages
AMD's production partner, GlobalFoundries, has historically been at the center of considerations on AMD's yield problems. That GlobalFoundries is seemingly doing a good job with Ryzen may not be much to say: those chips have incredibly small die sizes (192 mm²) for their number of cores. It seems that Global Foundries only hits problems with increased die sizes and complexity (which is, unfortunately for AMD, where it matters most).
As to its die yield issues, AMD is reported to be changing their main supplier for their 7 nm AI-geared Vega 20 from GlobalFoundries to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), who has already secured orders for AI chips from NVIDIA and Google. TSMC's 7nm and CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) capabilities have apparently proven themselves enough for AMD to change manufacturers. How this will affect AMD and GlobalFoundries' Wafer Agreement remains to be seen, but we expect AMD will be letting go of some additional payments GlobalFoundries' way.
62 Comments on AMD To Change Suppliers for Vega 20 GPUs on 7nm, HBM2 Packaging for Vega 11
So yeah, HBM on Vega 11 is probably a massive mistake, but if that's the way they taped it out then it's a mistake they're stuck with.
If AMD have chosen HBM2 for Vega11 as well, they've dug their own grave. These chips would have to last until Navi.
- Keep GlobalFoundries as supplier for Ryzen?
- New GPU supplier?
profit for everyone?If VEGA is being received well they might be hedging their bets. We still havent seen & heard much of VEGA x2 since ROCM leaks and since releases started moving months back we might not see it until next year Q1 or even Q2. Imagine the ruccus thats going to cause if things havent calmed down
Why must everything be in freaking Taiwan.
Well, except Intel thankfully.
edit: Even more sad since AMD used to be in my home state... along with others.
As for Taiwan, I mean this new operation they seem to be moving to (not GoFlo).
I doubt glofo can adapt properly or hold up a dual front, perhaps another fab needs to handle gpus since glofo is not up to the task, same can be said when amd changes cpu designs too...
I'm more concerned about the memory. Presumably Vega 11 is only going to get 4 GiB but how are they going to package it? 1x 4 GiB or 2 x 2 GiB? 1 x 4 GiB would be cheaper to manufacturer but would make for an odd looking chip.
I heard that most of the supply problems did stem from the interposer integrator. Not surprised at all that they're changing.
Where can I read up on this? I don't mean to derail, but it's a subject of interest to me.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication
"Packaging" is rarely done in the USA (or west in general). Global Foundries has a lot of fabs in Singapore due to acquisitions.
That being said , it's very good news that they are trying to switch to TSMC.
Certainly I can't be the only one that sees where this is going. AMD wants to produce smaller GPU chips and stick a bunch of them on a package exposing a single GPU to the system.
Vega may be the last monolithic, high performance GPU from AMD.