VR-Zone

TSMC's Senior VP of Operations, Mark Liu, has mentioned that TSMC's troubled 40nm process is now of the same quality as the mature 65nm process. The chamber mismatch issue which dropped the yields of the HD 5800 series to a reported 40% have now been resolved, and yields are recently rumoured to be between 60% and 80%.

Mr. Liu did not delve into further details. Yield rates are a win-win-win situation for everyone involved. ATI will be able to ship more GPUs at lower manufacturing costs, customers will get widespread availability and lower prices.

Nvidia's much anticipated GF100 is also based on the same TSMC 40nm process. With constant rumours of disastrous yields, delays after delays, an improvement in the process is just what Nvidia needed.

Of course, these yield increases are reflected and evidenced by the sudden widespread availability of the HD 5800 series around the turn of the year.

Interestingly, volume production of 28nm products is all set for third quarter 2010. This is earlier than we would be expecting ATI's next-generation N. Islands, or perhaps even Nvidia's GF100 die shrink. Could those products be 28nm, skipping 32nm completely? It has also been suggested that ATI will have a 32nm Evergreen shrink before moving on to the next generation N. Islands. TSMC certainly seem to have made up for the disastrous 40nm process with 28nm entering volume production before schedule.

Reference: Digitimes