If AMD were owned by someone with deeper pockets, I think their engineering group could do quite well for them.
But see the EETimes article here:
eetimes.com
and note the absence of AMD from the leading edge of 14/16nm. They are completely missing an opportunity to drastically close the gap with Intel, and it is being handed to them free of charge courtesy of Apple and the TSMC vs Samsung showdown, and AMD is AWOL. The only excuse is that perhaps they can't fund the design teams to do the work, but if there was ever a time to take on a little debt to fund some work, this would have been the time for AMD to step up and deliver, yet they are going to completely miss the opportunity. MediaTek will scramble for it, that I'm sure. AMD's management is just not with it anymore.
TSMC is conducting small-volume shipments of 16FF+ this quarter, according to Peng. The company's announcement of the "milestone" included endorsements of the process technology by customers such as Avago Technologies, Freescale, LG Electronics, MediaTek, Nvidia, Renesas, and Xilinx.
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Conspicuous absences
Mark Li, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said TSMC's biggest customers -- Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD -- were conspicuously absent from the announcement, because they are still hedging their bets between that supplier and Samsung. He also said TSMC is on track with FinFET development.
The three big TSMC customers will keep most of their FinFET orders with Samsung during the first half of 2015, he said.
In 20nm technology, TSMC is the sole supplier to Apple and Qualcomm, according to Li. However, "they will be shifting some orders back to Samsung" in the move to FinFET early next year. "Samsung is earlier than TSMC in this generation."
Samsung is probably offering lower prices to Apple and Qualcomm for FinFET products, he said. "In the third quarter of next year, you'll see Samsung in mass production, and TSMC will not have anything until the fourth quarter. From that point, you'll see the two companies sharing the business together."
Peng said Apple aims to split its FinFET business between Samsung and TSMC as part of an "order-allocation strategy."
Samsung's low yields
Still, analysts had concerns regarding Samsung's persistently low FinFET yield rate.
"Samsung's yield has been around 30-35% since the beginning of this year," Peng said. "We haven't seen any improvement. Apple and Qualcomm will shift more of their orders to TSMC if it can provide enough capacity."
Samsung may not be able to catch the first wave of FinFET demand in mid-2015, he said. The company has not significantly expanded its logic business for FinFET chips. Most of its 14nm FinFET production during the first quarter of 2015 will be used internally in the Galaxy S6 smartphone. |
