AMD, NVIDIA 40nm GPUs to ship in the spring
updated 03:35 pm EST, Wed December 24, 2008
AMD, NVIDIA 40nm chips
AMD's RV740 GPU chip based on the 40nm manufacturing process is now reportedly finished its design cycle and is ready to be sent out to manufacturing plants, according to a Wednesday report. AMD will begin mass producing the RV740 at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which also makes chips for other companies, by the end of the first quarter of 2009. Around the same time, competitor NVIDIA is also due to complete its tape-out of the 40nm GT212 GPU, with mass production also due to begin in the second quarter.
The ATI-branded RV740 will be the chipmaker's first 40nm graphics chip and is expected to be a smaller, 40nm version of the company's RV770LE core currently used in the Radeon HD 4830 graphics card. Preliminary specs include 640 stream processors, GDDR5 memory with a 128-bit interface and a 900MHz clock frequency (effective 3.6GHz) that is expected to deliver 57.6GBps speeds. AMD will also include the new chip in cards with GDDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory.
While it is not confirmed, the GT212 GPU is widely believed to succeed the company's flagship graphics processor, the GTX 280. NVIDIA's next-generation GT216 and GT300 GPUs will move over to the 40nm process in by the middle or latter part of 2009, the paper adds.
The report cites a Chinese-language Commercial Times report as its source for the information.
