14 DAY TRIAL // The 20nm Amur and Nolan processors from Advanced Micro Devices have been pegged for the third quarter of the year, but they won't be made by TSMC. That much has just been confirmed.
Some time ago, reports emerged about AMD cutting ties with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company after decades of collaboration.
AMD and NVIDIA design their chips and TSMC mass produces them. That's how things have been for the most part, and how they will no longer be.
While NVIDIA will continue to order chips from TSMC (though it seems to have turned to Samsung for 14nm ones), AMD will be using Globalfoundries.
Now, as if to confirm these reported changes in policy and contracts, TSMC has revealed that it will not make any 20nm processors. Well, no GPUs at any rate. If anything comes of the 20nm node in its camp, it will be low power ASICs.
Instead, it will move directly from 28nm to 16nm FinFET. Even if that means NVIDIA has to stall again, until 2016.
To get 16nm off the ground as quickly as possible, TSMC has decided to invest $16 billion / €14.11 billion in a new high-end factory.
Interestingly, TSMC wants to transit to 10nm by the end of 2016 as well, amazingly enough. Probably because Intel is already moving there.