AMD’s chief tech officer, the Papermaster, has introduced the their plans to transition straight from the present 14nm LPP manufacturing course of right down to the brand new 12nm LP lithography in 2018.
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Everyone has a Tech Conference today. I’ve acquired one I run out of the again of my storage the place I’ve lately mentioned such essential matters as the brand new manufacturing course of I’m considering of utilizing in my next-gen apple crumble and the age outdated spade vs. shovel debate. Attendance was properly down this yr, although… rattling Brexit. I suppose as one of many few vanguard silicon producers on the market, nevertheless, Global Foundries has extra name to run one and, arguably, is extra newsworthy.
It was at this yr’s Global Foundries Technology Conference that Mark Papermaster introduced subsequent yr’s transition right down to the smaller node, with Global Foundries themselves following this up by stating that precise 12nm LP manufacturing would start proper firstly of 2018. That means we shouldn’t have too lengthy to attend for brand spanking new, hopefully extra environment friendly, AMD silicon.
This appears to be like like it is going to be the lithography which kinds the premise of the touted AMD Vega and AMD Zen refreshes. Previous roadmaps launched by them have proven the 2 current-gen GPU and CPU applied sciences are set for some tweaks earlier than we see any motion on the upcoming Navi and Zen 2 architectures, each of that are anticipated to be created utilizing the 7nm manufacturing course of.
AMD had initially mentioned these refreshes can be made utilizing an up to date 14nm+ course of, however given the present 14nm LPP (low energy plus) is itself a barely up to date model of their unique 14nm node, it is smart for them to take Global Foundries new 12nm LP design for the Zen and Vega tweaks.
Whether the 12nm course of will really be a real 12nm design continues to be up for debate, nevertheless. Intel have been speaking about producers having “gotten fast and loose in terms of how they name their process technologies,” as they gave extra particulars lately on their own 10nm node.
Silicon manufacturing rivals, TSMC, are creating the 12nm lithography that’s being utilized in Nvidia’s Volta GPU structure, however have themselves defined it’s only a time period they’re utilizing for his or her up to date 16nm course of as a result of they’ve upped the density, efficiency, and energy consumption.
So it’s solely potential that that is nonetheless the 14nm+ AMD have been speaking about for some time, simply with a elaborate new title to allow them to compete on advertising phrases with their know-how rivals.
But if the 12nm LPP node can ship increased density and better effectivity that may be welcome for each the current-gen Vega and Zen architectures. The Vega GPU might do with working a bit cooler and chow down on much less energy – in an analogous method to the fast refresh of Nvidia’s 400-series Fermi GPUs – and the Ryzen chips would additionally profit from a extra environment friendly design, particularly if it permits for increased clockspeeds and higher overclocking efficiency too.
Fingers crossed we shouldn’t have to attend lengthy to see the fruits of the AMD/GloFo labours if manufacturing actually is beginning early within the new yr.
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