TSMC Begins Volume Production of 28nm Parts

TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor company responsible for producing silicon for both of the leading discrete GPU manufacturers, has just announced that it has begun volume production of wafers built on a 28nm process. Of these, four variants exist; High Performance, High Performance Low Power, Low Power and High Performance Mobile Computing – the latter being a bit special in that it won’t actually become available until next year.

This news of 28nm production is important, as AMD and NVIDIA have both been stuck in a lull where their respective GPUs are concerned. The 40nm node was introduced at TSMC about three years ago, and as a result, we’ve been stuck seeing GPUs built upon that process since. While gamers and GPGPU customers haven’t suffered, per se, there does seem to be a feeling of slowed technical progression due to the length of time between each leap in process. But at the same time, the lull no doubt has given both AMD and NVIDIA lots of time to perfect their designs.

That said, there’s no telling when we’ll see products from either of these companies based on 28nm. According to the rumor-mill, however, AMD could ship its first parts late this year, but more than likely both AMD and NVIDIA will use Q1 as their launching pad. Not to mention all of the other companies that use TSMC for all of their production needs.