Re: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. today announced that it would complete 45nm technology qualification and enter production as early as September 2007. ... >> If they're going to be in production of parts for their customers this quarter, it would be surprising if there weren't samples starting to make it to those customers around now.
Sorry, Dan. When a foundry discusses going to production, they mean that their lines become qualified for their partners to start taping out products. By your own links, the earliest anyone can tape out a design is September, meaning that samples won't be available until November or December. Again, "at the earliest".
Of course, historically, neither AMD, nor nVidia, nor even ATI have had designs ready when TSMC has first started their ramp. FPGA designs are usually the first, since they require the least amount of front end work. Also, they take advantage of TSMC's back end design services, which allow them to be at the forefront of new process nodes.
AMD is just starting to ramp ATI 65nm products, and 55nm won't be announced until later in the year. 45nm is still quite a long ways off for GPUs, let alone hypothetical bulk AMD CPUs.... |
