All AMD R6xx chips are 65 nanometre chips, now

[JPB]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38292




WHEN YOURS TRULY learned of a new respin of the chip in early January, we learned that this respin was caused by one fact, and one fact only.

The 80 nanometre chip was bleeding current like a slaughtered pig bleeds blood as said quadruped heads to the Munchner Halle to be served up as a sausage or two. Squealing.

However, we did not know then that AMD did not order just a respin, but the company got an attack of bravery, didn't take the R520/R580 route, and scrapped the R600 altogether. Things change.

The 80nm R600 die - as it was leaked - will now come to life only in a very limited amount of chips, since AMD decided to solve its problems by pulling all resources to go 65 nano across the board, including this 720 million trannie heavy monster. This drastically reduces power consumption and lets AMD clock the R600 to 1GHz or even more. The mass production R600 will be made on a 65 nanometre process.

That means that even though AMD is more than six months behind in terms of the G80 vs. R600 battle, AMD actually now has a six month levy over the NV55, better known to people as ex-G81, currently known about as G90 - or the NV55 in the halls of Satan Clara.

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour. So, from March 16th at 19:59 CET - the R600 which you will buy in stores in May will be 65nm, and will consume almost one third less power than the 80 nanometre one. µ

 

[Nightmare225]

Good if true.

 

[nitromullet]

That would actually be really cool if after the 5 month wait AMD had an ace up its sleeve that really put the hurt on G80. Not only because it would have to be one badass card, but also to keep NVIDIA in line. I also think it would bode well for the future of high end gpu program at AMD.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

awesome if true. but i doubt it.

 

[fierydemise]

If all the rumors end up true R600 will be a true monster, that however is a big if

 

[Cookie Monster]

65nm? what so the INQ thinks you can just jump to 65nm in 5 months?

What people dont understand is that from 90nm to 80 nm is possible, because its just an optical shrink of the GPU architecture. However from 80nm to 65nm is another story. 65nm is a totally different process, and the fact is that you cannot just shrink to 65nm. The architecture itself has to be revised, tweaked and changed to accomodate the new process.

Unless they had two teams working on both 80nm and 65nm from a long time ago, i just dont see this as possible. Scraping the 80nm design is financially illogical to do so. The time period for such move is too short to be actually believable.

 

[Bateluer]

Does AMD have the 65nm fab capability to produce enough A64 chips and R600 chips? I know they contract out to Charter for some of their chips currently.

 

[firewolfsm]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Does AMD have the 65nm fab capability to produce enough A64 chips and R600 chips? I know they contract out to Charter for some of their chips currently.

TSMC does, which is where GPUs are made. But as cookie monster said, the switch from 80 to 65 can't be made that fast.

Since the 7800GT/X was released, nVidia spend the rest of the time and more revising for the 7900GT/X.

 

[Snakexor]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Does AMD have the 65nm fab capability to produce enough A64 chips and R600 chips? I know they contract out to Charter for some of their chips currently.

TSMC does, which is where GPUs are made. But as cookie monster said, the switch from 80 to 65 can't be made that fast.

Since the 7800GT/X was released, nVidia spend the rest of the time and more revising for the 7900GT/X.

what does that have to do with 65nm

 

[Nightmare225]

Originally posted by: Snakexor

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Does AMD have the 65nm fab capability to produce enough A64 chips and R600 chips? I know they contract out to Charter for some of their chips currently.

TSMC does, which is where GPUs are made. But as cookie monster said, the switch from 80 to 65 can't be made that fast.

Since the 7800GT/X was released, nVidia spend the rest of the time and more revising for the 7900GT/X.

what does that have to do with 65nm

That was also a major process change.

 

[imported_thefonz]

Well this is good news, only 2 weeks too go till reviews! hopefully r600 blows g80 out of the water.

 

[n7]

Rumorific!

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Snakexor

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Does AMD have the 65nm fab capability to produce enough A64 chips and R600 chips? I know they contract out to Charter for some of their chips currently.

TSMC does, which is where GPUs are made. But as cookie monster said, the switch from 80 to 65 can't be made that fast.

Since the 7800GT/X was released, nVidia spend the rest of the time and more revising for the 7900GT/X.

what does that have to do with 65nm

Add 1000 probably. What he means is NV has been working on 8900 GTS/GTX and whatever is after that for the last 5 months since the 8800 launch. Word is the 8900s on an 80nm process are ready to go, with the first G80-based 80nm parts set to launch in about a month.

I wondered why ATI/AMD didn't use AMD's fabs for R600 to speed up the delays and someone said they didn't want to shift production away from their CPUs. Looks like they might have said screw it and went that route anyways. R600 is late, its hot, its power-hungry, and its probably not hitting target clock speeds on a 90nm process to beat G80 so time to respin again and shrink it down.

AMD spent a lot to buy ATI, they're banking on R600 to make the investment worthwhile. Barcelona isn't expected to ramp up until Q4 or even early 2008 and they've got tons of inventory of their current chips. Might not be a bad idea to shift some of their fabs to R600 production to prevent any further delays......

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Why is everyone bashing TheINQ now? If AMD confirmed the rumor and it doesnt turn out to be true, its AMDs fault, not INQ

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Why is everyone bashing TheINQ now? If AMD confirmed the rumor and it doesnt turn out to be true, its AMDs fault, not INQ

Its probably true actually. There was a pretty official looking marketing pamphlet in one of the R600 links from CeBit yesterday comparing the features of R600 to competitors and ATI Xeno (XBox360 GPU). It clearly stated R600 was going to be 65nm.

Makes sense though. What do you do when your GPU underperforms, runs too hot, and draws too much power? You shrink it.

 

[Snakexor]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Why is everyone bashing TheINQ now? If AMD confirmed the rumor and it doesnt turn out to be true, its AMDs fault, not INQ

Its probably true actually. There was a pretty official looking marketing pamphlet in one of the R600 links from CeBit yesterday comparing the features of R600 to competitors and ATI Xeno (XBox360 GPU). It clearly stated R600 was going to be 65nm.

Makes sense though. What do you do when your GPU underperforms, runs too hot, and draws too much power? You shrink it.

you are such a fan boy

 

[Munky]

Well, that would be one hell of a surprise if true. However, I don't think either AMD's or TSMC's 65nm process is mature enough to result in big improvements over 90nm or 80nm silicon for now.

 

[Nightmare225]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Why is everyone bashing TheINQ now? If AMD confirmed the rumor and it doesnt turn out to be true, its AMDs fault, not INQ

Its probably true actually. There was a pretty official looking marketing pamphlet in one of the R600 links from CeBit yesterday comparing the features of R600 to competitors and ATI Xeno (XBox360 GPU). It clearly stated R600 was going to be 65nm.

Makes sense though. What do you do when your GPU underperforms, runs too hot, and draws too much power? You shrink it.

Of course, using a magical spell that instantly shrinks the chip. Why didn't NVIDIA think of that sooner... :disgust:

 

[the Chase]

Would be awesome if true. However I share Cookie Monster's view on this being possible this quick. It sounds like they aren't launching till mid-May though so maybe??

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Snakexor

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Why is everyone bashing TheINQ now? If AMD confirmed the rumor and it doesnt turn out to be true, its AMDs fault, not INQ

Its probably true actually. There was a pretty official looking marketing pamphlet in one of the R600 links from CeBit yesterday comparing the features of R600 to competitors and ATI Xeno (XBox360 GPU). It clearly stated R600 was going to be 65nm.

Makes sense though. What do you do when your GPU underperforms, runs too hot, and draws too much power? You shrink it.

you are such a fan boy

Nah, I call it as I see it and haven't cared what logo is on a piece of silicon in my PC for a very long time. Fact of the matter is AMD/ATI is handling this R600 debacle poorly, to the point I feel bad for the actual fan boys who are waiting for this hunk of garbage. Oh well, glad I didn't wait on R600. Who knows if its a killer product I'll probably end up buying it anyways, but at least I'll have gotten 6-8 months of good use out of my GTS first.

 

[Matt2]

How much money do u think AMD spent to spin and respin R600 a couple of times on 80nm and then do the same thing over again on an immature 65nm process?

I find it very hard to believe that R600 was supposed to be a 65nm chip from the get go.

I think its more likely that we will see low to mid range parts come out on 65nm first and then R600's refresh will be the first flag ship product on 65nm.

 

[Janooo]

This is from xbitlabs. It's 10 days old: R600 - 80nm; 610-630 - 65nm

...
Advanced Micro Devices, the company that supplies 25% of the world?s x86 microprocessors that has been making inroads into graphics technologies business since it acquired ATI Technologies in late October, 2006, demonstrated the delayed code-named R600 graphics boards at a conference and said it would introduce the board along with its derivatives made using 65nm process technology.

?We pushed out the launch of the R600 and people thought ?it must be a silicon or software problem, it?s got to be a bug?. In fact, our mainstream chips are in 65nm and are coming out extremely fast. Because of that configuration, we have an interesting opportunity to come to market with a broader range of products,? said David Orton, the former chief exec of ATI who now leads AMD?s graphics product group.

Earlier AMD already notified its partners and media that it planned to delay the release of the code-named R600 graphics chip, but did not provide any approximate timeframe for the commercial launch of graphics boards based on the R600. However, a document presumably sent to AMD?s add-in-card partners, revealed that certain versions of R600 graphics cards would reach the partners only in late March, days before the quarter ends.

While it was generally believed that the reason for the delay was ATI?s intention to develop an R600-based board to compete against Nvidia?s GeForce 8800 320MB graphics card. However, right now it is claimed that the company plans to align the launch of the R600 made using 80nm process technology with the launch of DirectX 10-supporting products made using 65nm fabrication process, which code-names are RV610 and RV630.

?Instead of having them separate, we thought, lets line that up, so we delayed for several weeks,? David Orton is reported to have said according to ExtremeTech web-site.

In a bid to prove the existence of R600, AMD demonstrated at the press event in San Francisco, the so-called ?Teraflop in a Box? system running a standard version of Microsoft Windows XP Professional that harnessed the power of AMD Opteron dual-core processor technology and two next-generation AMD R600 ?stream processors? capable of performing more than 1 trillion floating-point calculations per second using a general ?multiply-add? (MADD) calculation, according to AMD.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

We have talked with several high-ranking AMD executives and confirmed this rumour.

Wow if this is true, then it's amazing.

Rumorific!

 

[Matt2]

However, right now it is claimed that the company plans to align the launch of the R600 made using 80nm process technology with the launch of DirectX 10-supporting products made using 65nm fabrication process, which code-names are RV610 and RV630.

Isn't that what I said? You guys should listen to me more often!

If AMD delayed R600 just so RV610 and RV630 could come out on 65nm, I will be extremely upset.

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: Janooo
This is from xbitlabs. It's 10 days old: R600 - 80nm; 610-630 - 65nm

...

... but the latest rumors are

http://www.k-hardware.de/news.php?s=K31...636e5a8c7e84869802fb04d41&news_id=6395

...
Gingen wir bisher davon aus, dass der R600 in 80 nm kommen würde, wurden wir in der exklusiven Runde eines besseren belehrt. Wie es scheint, will AMD den Chip von Anfang an in 65 nm bringen. Grund hierfür seien Probleme bzw. die schlechte Ausbeute des 80 nm Prozesses, der wohl nicht unerhebliche Schwierigkeiten mit Leckströmen haben soll. Gefertigt wird der R600 übrigens weiterhin bei TSMC.
...
If we assumed up to now from the fact that the R600 would come to 80 nm, we were taught in the exclusive round of a better one. As it seems, AMD wants to bring the chip from the outset in 65 nm. A reason for this are problems or the bad yield of 80 nm of the process which should not probably have unimportant difficulties with leakage streams. The R600 is made, by the way, furthermore with TSMC.

So who knows; we just have to wait and see.

Edit: That's a computer translation. I don't speak German.