AMD Exec Resigns, Company Moves 7nm Chip Production To TSMC

[PaulAlcorn]

AMD's Jim Anderson resigned. AMD also announced that it is moving all 7nm silicon production to TSMC.

AMD Exec Resigns, Company Moves 7nm Chip Production To TSMC : Read more

 

[Hetzbh_]

7nm GPU "later this year"???
Next week will be September, which leaves 4 months until the end of the year and yet, no leaks about NAVI....

 

[Gillerer]

The 7 nm GPU this year is the 7 nm Vega, only headed for the Radeon Instinct accelerators.

 

[bit_user]

AMD is losing executives at a surprising rate.

I'm not convinced there's anything unusual, here. AMD is just more in the spotlight, these days, so moves like these get more attention. In similar sized companies, executives come & go and are shuffled around at a pretty decent pace.

You might even say that a small price they pay for their big compensation packages is poor job security.

 

[aerik109]

Not True.

Vega 20 will be available in consumer, workstation, and datacenter flavors.

 

[ingtar33]

what? no exhortation to preorder NAVI without a bit of real world testing attached to this news? I thought that was the new THG thing to do.

 

[captaincharisma]

he must be getting out before more meltdown and Spectre exploits are found in their ryzen chips

 

[aerik109]

he must be getting out before more meltdown and Spectre exploits are found in their ryzen chips

Ignorance.

https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates

I am a fanboy of neither, but the nonsense stops here.

 

[alextheblue]

Not True.

Vega 20 will be available in consumer, workstation, and datacenter flavors.

In 2018? Link? I heard consumer versions were following in 2019 (or skipping to Navi depending on the rumor).

 

[aerik109]

7nm GPU "later this year"???
Next week will be September, which leaves 4 months until the end of the year and yet, no leaks about NAVI....

Vega 20 Consumer cards will be available in q4, but will not outperform Turing.

 

[bit_user]

Not True.

Vega 20 will be available in consumer, workstation, and datacenter flavors.

I think @Gillerer means that it will initially go into their machine learning and datacenter products. That's all they've publicly committed to do with it. Since it uses (up to) 4 stacks of HBM2, it might not be cost-competitive, in the consumer market.

Even if they cut back to just 2 stacks, I think the current Vega dGPUs are hitting a price floor that's keeping them from being truly cost-competitive with current pricing on Pascal products.

 

[bit_user]

Not True.

Vega 20 will be available in consumer, workstation, and datacenter flavors.

In 2018? Link? I heard consumer versions were following in 2019 (or skipping to Navi depending on the rumor).

The datacenter products got moved up to a 2018 launch, but I have also heard no official word on consumer products.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-7nm-gpu-vega-gaming,37228.html

 

[bit_user]

7nm GPU "later this year"???
Next week will be September, which leaves 4 months until the end of the year and yet, no leaks about NAVI....

Vega 20 Consumer cards will be available in q4, but will not outperform Turing.

Source?

AMD already said it's only 1.35x as fast as Vega 14 nm, so nobody should expect miracles.

 

[owhansson]

Gosh, what a blow to GF. I hope they're okay. And I hope this was a call based on expected demand compared to R&D-cost, rather than an R&D-failure.

 

[owhansson]

Apparently, as hoped, it was a strategic decision. To deploy 7nm (and the following shrinks) on a profitable scale, GF would have to build at least one new fab worth around 10b$. Probably more. The investment would be too big, considering their position and also considering the good profitability and demand for 14nm. Thus, they will milk the profitable 14nm. A wise decision, probably. I have a feeling 14nm will be the last good node on silicon.

 

[bit_user]

I have a feeling 14nm will be the last good node on silicon.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder when we'll hit a point where the usable life of chips starts shrinking to less than the typical upgrade period.

 

[redgarl]

7nm GPU "later this year"???
Next week will be September, which leaves 4 months until the end of the year and yet, no leaks about NAVI....

Vega 20 Consumer cards will be available in q4, but will not outperform Turing.

Source?

AMD already said it's only 1.35x as fast as Vega 14 nm, so nobody should expect miracles.

35% more performance and 30% faster... rumor at 65-70% performances increase.

Also, these cards are not consumer grade, they are client based and specific for data centers. Don`t hope anything to fight against Turing before Navi next year.

 

[redgarl]

Okay, the move out of 7nm from Global Foundry is a 180 degree turn from the last interview with the president. It is a really bad news for AMD because it limit their window of opportunity, however, I am glad they just decided to go TSMC.

As long as Ryzen is still on 7nm and the roadmap is unchanged, it is going to be fine with them.

 

[myriad46]

GF is in my town. They just announced 'hundreds' of layoffs (out of about 3400 employees) associated with this shift. Not good for the locals.

 

[jimmysmitty]

he must be getting out before more meltdown and Spectre exploits are found in their ryzen chips

Ignorance.

https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates

I am a fanboy of neither, but the nonsense stops here.

What they say and what could be are very different. One variant might not affect them but another could.

Okay, the move out of 7nm from Global Foundry is a 180 degree turn from the last interview with the president. It is a really bad news for AMD because it limit their window of opportunity, however, I am glad they just decided to go TSMC.

As long as Ryzen is still on 7nm and the roadmap is unchanged, it is going to be fine with them.

The issue is going to be capacity. If TSMC now has to push out 7nm for Apple, nVidia and AMD it might be a tight squeez and I am sure Apple and nVidia will get first dibs since I am sure they signed to do it already.

That said, GF halting everything beyond 14nm/12nm is interesting. They claim its to squeeze every bit of performance out of it but I am willing to bet they are running into similar issues Intel has been on 10nm. This is why two things need to happen.

1. New material that can scale beyond 14nm well

2. transistor stacking.

Otherwise we might just hit a very tall and solid wall.