During the Financial Analyst Day, the AMD leaders reported that the company, in addition to Globalfoundries and TMSC, will turn to the services of another production partner for printing its accelerated processors (APU) — IBM. As you know, at present, the production of 40-nm of the entry-efficient elementary level (E, C and Z series) is engaged in TSMC, while at the 32-nm capacities of Globalfoundries, an APU of average level is carried out (Series A and E2). Production of traditional processors (FX, Opteron) is exclusively devoted to Globalfoundries, and video cards — TSMC (Radeon 6000/7000).
It is reported that Trinity, the heir to LLANO, will be produced both using the 32-nm production standards of the SOI of Globalfoundries and IBM — Presumably, at the IBM plant in the city of Skishkill (New York). IBM and Globalfoundries, however, are not rivals: at the IBM plant in the city of Skishkill, a former AMD team was located to develop silicon crystals, which now belongs to Globalfoundries after the allocation of AMD production capacities in 2008 in a separate company. Obviously, the problems with the production of Llano forced the company to reinsured once again.
AMD has expanded the number of production partners for APU Fusion: Greetings IBM
One of the words on which the Executive Director of AMD Rory P (Rory P. Read) During its recent key report, it was «performance». Here you can recall the stubborn rumors that went in the first half of 2011, when AMD allegedly lost the contract with Apple due to the fact that she could not fulfill his promises for the supply of 32-nm LLANO chips in a sufficient volume. Something similar was with Lenovo, a company from which Mr. Reed came to AMD.
AMD has repeatedly promised a wider availability of accelerated Trinity processors. As you can see, this will be achieved not only by improving the fifth-fed 32-nm of Globalfudries crystals, but also by attracting IBM capacities.
By the way, judging by the internal tests of AMD, 35-in version of Trinity with nuclei x86 pileDriver architecture (improved version of the Bulldozer) will provide a 25 percent increase in CPU-calculations with respect to 35-in Llano (nuclei X86 Husky K10.5+) According to the results in the test package PC Mark Vantage. AMD also promises an impressive 50 percent graphic performance increase in 35-time version of the Trinity version against 35-in APU Llano in the 3DMark Vantage Benchmark.
Whether Globalfoundries and IBM will be able to ensure sufficient volumes of Trinity chips that have avoided failures that have befell LLANO and attract companies such as Apple or Lenovo? Only time will tell. One thing is clear: involving such a powerful partner as IBM to the production of, no doubt, should increase AMD competitiveness in relation to Intel.
Sources:
- VR-Zone.COM, XBITLABS.com