Fudzilla reports that ATI's next generation will be fabricated at a 28nm process. This comes in direct contradiction of AMD's latest roadmap and previous rumours, which all suggest a 32nm process.

The release date has long been speculated as Q4 2010, so that seems likely. The next generation is codenamed "N. Islands" for now. It is unclear if Globalfoundries or TSMC will be contracted for fabrication - or a combination of the two. A 32nm process still seems the more likely, though Fudzilla feels it is 28nm. N. Islands is expected to be the first major new architecture since R600.

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Six weeks on, and ATI Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 cars are still facing availability issues. TSMC and AMD just cannot ship enough Cypress products to meet the runaway demand. As a direct result, as we expected, the HD 5800 shortage is causing delays in ATI's release schedule.

Of course, the product most affected is Hemlock or HD 5900 series. Rumoured to be releasing late-October, now Hemlock seems delayed to late-November. The reason is simple - if AMD were struggling to put out a single Cypress die, what are the chances that they will have enough for a dual Cypress product?

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Chinese website PCpop.com have unveiled a review of ATI's Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity⁶ Edition. As the name suggests, the Eyefinity⁶ variant is much similar to the standard HD 5870. The main difference is, of course, the Eyefinity⁶ Edition features six displayport outputs, so you can connect to a whopping 6 displays at the same time. Four such cards in CrossfireX, and you have a 24-panel giant display.

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As we expected, AMD is now releasing a new revision of the Phenom II X4 965, C3. The most notable feature is reduced power consumption, dropping from a seary 140W to 125W. In reality, the previous 965 was right on the boundary of 125W anyway, so the actual drop in load power is reported to be more to the tune of 10W. A thermal improvement is also expected to yield a greater overclocking headroom, though that needs to, and will be, tested soon.

In addition, there are a few other tweaks, such as official support for four DDR3 modules at 1333 MHz, and C1E is finally supported in hardware. AMD have struggled with power management, especially the original Phenom series, with slower software power switching costing big chunks of performance. Switching power states through hardware will have "virtually no impact" on performance.

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According to Digitimes, AMD is making several changes to its CPU schedules, particularly corresponding to the Phenom II line. Phenom II X4 910 and 945 are EOL already. AMD will stop taking orders for a whole raft of CPUs starting Q1 2010. These CPUs will be currently existing steppings of Phenom II X4 925, 965, 810; Phenom II X3 720; Phenom II X2 540; Athlon II X4 620; and Athlon II X3 425.

A new stepping of Phenom II CPUs is expected to hit, reducing power consumptions of several Phenom II products. Phenom II X4 955 is expected to move to 95W, Phenom II X4 965 to 125W. A new Phenom II X4 965, clocked at 3.6 GHz is also rumoured as part of this new stepping.

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A Japanese website has leaked slides from a major presentation organized by AMD Japan. We have a roadmap with all details, not just CPU, but GPU, IGP, Chipset and entire platforms from AMD all the way till 2011 - for both Desktop and Notebooks. 

AMD's senior manager of development relations, Richard Huddy, in a talk with Hexus, feels Nvidia is "somewhat abandoning the gaming market". 

TSMC's troubled 40nm process has once again hit yield issues. When RV740 (HD 4770) first released in Q2 2009, availability remained poor due to troubled yields reported to be as low as 20-30%. By July, the 40nm yield had improved to a respectable 60%. 

Following Nvidia's leaks of its "next-gen" GT 300M series, Nordichardware reports that ATI's DX11 mobile cards are arriving in January 2010. 

In our Availability Report from 11 days ago, we noticed a general increase in HD 5850 prices across the board. Fudzilla now reports that AMD have themselves increased the prices by $15 to $20, taking into account the excess demand.