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Radeon HD 7000 Nearing Mass Production

sirmonkey1985 said:
the 6900 series should of been 32nm(thanks worthless TSMC). so its a yes and no, the 6900 series was suppose to be 32nm and the 7000 series is suppose to be a refresh of that 32nm gpu that never happened but in a 28nm process. there will most likely be a good benefit at the 28nm process since the cayman gpu was never designed to be on a 40nm process. they sort of jerry rigged it at the last minute to work while trying to fill in all the unused space on the process.
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There is nothing wrong with TSMC at the moment, its not their choice, they don't specific manufacture for AMD to nVidia, just like any other fab around the world.
The decision is in the hands of AMD, nothing more or less...

I really don't see why people blame them for. It's none sense to begin with.
 
Last I heard AMD was calling their Scorpius platform a Bulldozer class CPU, 900 series chipset motherboard, and a 6000 series video card. Since the Bulldozer chips aren't due out till June/July, I doubt AMD will have the 7000 series video cards out this summer.
 
Posted this in another thread last night, reposting here due to relevance.
Southern Islands taped out around February so the HD7k 28nm pipe cleaner mid-range limited production card(think of the HD4770) will be out early to mid Q3 2011. But it all depends if Global Foundries and TSMC deliver 28nm bulk production on schedule.
Technical details of the architecture will be revealed in June at the Fusion Developers Conference. https://amdfusion.wingateweb.com/scheduler/eventguide/publicScheduleByType.jsp?ts=13026810674470

The Key Note will briefly cover some details
103 - Evolution of AMD's Graphics Core, and Preview of Graphics Core Next
GPU shader cores have been evolving frequently and significantly at AMD. We introduced our common shader core in 2007 with the HD 2000 series. This introduced the unified VLIW-5 instruction set that we've had since. In late 2010, we introduced the first significant departure from this core architecture, the symmetrical VLIW-4 used in the HD6900 series of products. In this presentation, we will review that evolution, but also present an overview of the next generation of AMD cores under development. This next generation of cores will propel forward its capabilities and continue this evolution.

Speaker
Eric Demers CTO and CVP, Graphics BU AMD
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And there will also be a one hour in depth talk
2620 - AMD Graphics Core Next
At the heart of every AMD GPU is a power aware high performance set of compute units that have been advancing to bring users new levels of programmability, precision and performance. Starting with the introduction of the HD 2000 family of Unified Shader Systems to the PC consumer markets in 2007, AMD has delivered four unique generations. In this presentation, an overview of AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture will be introduced. We’ll talk about the architecture of this new shader system, and how it provides improvements to the necessary software stack and creates user programming flexibility. We believe you will obtain an understanding of this new architecture and how it lays the foundation for future AMD architectures.

Speaker
Mike Houston Fellow AMD
Mike Mantor Senior Fellow AMD
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HD7k will be a die shrink of Cayman so it should be pretty straight forward. This does not mean however that it will have the same amount of SMs, on the contrary. Increases in SM density should be expected since this will be manufactured on a smaller process. How much of an increase? who knows. There have been some "leaks" about the 7990 having 6400 SPs but that's an obvious fake from the time of Cypress when AMD had a vliw5 architecture.
 
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The next time I'll be upgrading is when AMD introduces the Radeon 9000 series.

The Internet will literally explode with the cries of, "ITS OVER NINE THOUSANNDDDDD"
 
I certainly would like these to come out around July-August, I'm planning a build soon and I don't know whether I should stick with LGA 1155 or wait for 2011 and Bulldozer. Besides, if it comes out then, I'd bet that'd be before Fernandon't Scorres puts one in the back of the net. :)
 
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shansoft said:
There is nothing wrong with TSMC at the moment, its not their choice, they don't specific manufacture for AMD to nVidia, just like any other fab around the world.
The decision is in the hands of AMD, nothing more or less...

I really don't see why people blame them for. It's none sense to begin with.
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I think the reason they blame TSMC is because ATI/Nvidia thought/were told that TSMC would be able to get their 32nm process manufacturing going in time for their recent releases, but TSMC wasn't able to, so they had to kludge parts designed for 32nm onto a 40nm process.
 
happymedium said:
At best this will be another 4770 40nm type of release, somewhere in 6850 range of performance at 28nm. You will not see high end 28nm parts till the end of the year.
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given ATi's history, I would tend to agree with this
 
Looking at the tick-tock way AMD is moving forward really makes you glad that ATi and AMD teamed up.

performance is great but just the experience in manufacturing is teaching Nivida a tough lesson.

Just looking at how well AMD was able to handle the "not so optimal" 40nm processing (and the early yield issues) and moving onto a 28nm process so quickly says alot about how engineering for the manufacturing process (and not hoping you can manufacture what you engineer) can pay off in the end
 
Lets hope AMD's 7900 series won't have memory issues that screw up all their cards. :p

And Suarez has already proven himself to be a worthy replacement for Torres in my mind. Setting up Kuyt for that goal against MU was priceless.
 
I think the truely interesting part about this means we'll get to read some interesting bullsh...err...quality leaked benchmarks in May that claim to be done by Chinese Factory workers with leaked cards!
 
This is most likely going to be a let down as a half truth to the rumor type thing. AMD will probably just test the 28nm waters with low end card with limited supply. Been seeing conflicting reports of 28nm not being ready till early 2012. http://news.cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_35399.html
The IC industry is also affected by the global economy in terms of scheduling.
 
*Goes to buy some AMD stock today*

Come on AMD! Bulldozer + HD7000 success could be very good!!! Also, I'm loving my 6850s. To me, the HD6000 series has been the first time since the X1900s that AMD (ATi) has been the clear cut winner. NVDA has comparable if not identical performance but I'm sick of their furnaces. To me it seems like every single NVDA card pulls like 10-30W more than its AMD counterpart.
 
Forceman said:
I think the reason they blame TSMC is because ATI/Nvidia thought/were told that TSMC would be able to get their 32nm process manufacturing going in time for their recent releases, but TSMC wasn't able to, so they had to kludge parts designed for 32nm onto a 40nm process.
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No, TSMC already said they are skipping 32nm and go straight to 28nm...
They said it a long time ago.. That is not a excuse...
 
The 7000 series Next core shaders sound pretty interesting. Couple that with the increased density that a 28nm die process can provide and we could easily be looking at 1920 or more shaders for the 7k series flagship part, with AMD still being able to pocket big profits with their 'small die' strategy. I'm hoping for at least a 40-50% improvement in performance over the 6000 series at previous price points. That will force Nvidia in turn to put out competitive price/performance parts although I'm sure there will still be a slight price premium for the Nvidia brand.
 
While I would like to be optimistic on this rumor, I absolutely doubt it that the 7000 series is this close to mass production. I didn't even think TSMC's 28nm process was ready, as i'm sure we would have heard lots of news by now if it was.

While we know nothing right now, I also hope that the 7000 series will offer some good performance increases. They better have something serious, because Fermi 2 is proabably something that will really have the ability to start flexing its muscle at 28nm. I can't remember how long we've been stuck with 40nm lithography, but it definately seems like an eternity in the way that AMD's processors have been stuck with 45nm lithography.
 
Seems to me the 7000 series could wait a little bit, considering ATI is slowly conquering the low and mid-range GPU market. Being the fastest is nice, but making a ton of money is nicer.
 
makwy2 said:
Seems to me the 7000 series could wait a little bit, considering ATI is slowly conquering the low and mid-range GPU market. Being the fastest is nice, but making a ton of money is nicer.
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Short-term view perhaps? The 7000 series will make money as well. Releasing the 7000 series, won't cause AMD to suddenly stop selling video cards. If the technology has already been R&Ded, its a good idea to release it and start working on the next product. Customer's would just buy the box that says 7540 instead of 6540 (in the low-end range gpu market). What releasing the 7xxx series as soon as it's ready might do is make them more money by increasing their market share over nVidia allowing them to sell more volume/units.

If ATI were able to release in Q2(July-August), 7xxx series parts that perform say 30% better than the 6 series parts for the same-price as the 6 series is currently selling for, the performance:price ratio will be 30% better than it is now. In the low-end to mid-range market, if ATI's cards are already better and they just get 30% faster for the same price in the 7k series, its a win-win for customers and ATI. Cards performing better will make more customer's buy ATI cards than nVidia. ATI gets a larger volume of sales from a larger marketshare. ATI selling more units, translates into more profit.

If nVidia releases it's next-generation of GPUs 2 months later. That's 2 months that ATI's cards look 'even better' versus nVidia and perhaps the obvious choice for consumers. The added bonus being over those say '2' months building maybe brand recognition, selling more volume and more profit.

The advantage to waiting on the 7000 series is non-existant pretty much. If the 7000 series is a let down, allowing nVidia to release their card first and releasing a lackluster product after would only tarnish ATI's name and/or make ATI look bad. If ATI at least beat nVidia out the door and got a head start on sales, it looks better for ATI. As cards released later in a cycle should generally perform better than cards released earlier. Obvious exceptions perhaps being GTX580 versus 6970s in equal pricing performance comparisons in SLI, Tri-sli, etc setups.
 
shansoft said:
No, TSMC already said they are skipping 32nm and go straight to 28nm...
They said it a long time ago.. That is not a excuse...
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Yes they were told a long time ago, but tapeing out to shipping product can take a year so when they told them doesn't really matter. Chip designers have to account for issues like this so it wasn't a end of the world issue for neither AMD or Nvidia but it did force some small compromises for both of them. I'm not familiar with Nvidia's compromises but AMD had to drop PCI express 3.0 support (which in the end didn't matter) and a few SIMD units. Not really a kludge but an inconvenience. At least now we'll get what they originally planned, and a speed/heat difference maybe.
 
9800pro is mine so right there with ya! And I have a 9800GTX too.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Personally I would pick 9500 pro as it was the price point most people were willing to buy at ($199)
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And you could softmod the old ones with the right-angle memory layout! Man, good times.

Makes me wonder if they are really going to call the next series 7000 - could lead to confusion in the future once they release a 7500 series part, not to mention when we hit the 9000 series again, considering how many 9000-series chips there were (9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, etc.)
 
Sottilde said:
And you could softmod the old ones with the right-angle memory layout! Man, good times.

Makes me wonder if they are really going to call the next series 7000 - could lead to confusion in the future once they release a 7500 series part, not to mention when we hit the 9000 series again, considering how many 9000-series chips there were (9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, etc.)
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Remember that these are the Radeon HD parts just like the 5000 and 6000 series have been Radeon HDxxxx's.

Even for the casual people who are out of the loop, they generally have a pretty short term memory and will have forgotten about it.
 
I suppose. And the ending two numbers are different as well, AFAIK there was never differentiation in the tens place in the old generations, just 9700 and 9800, nothing like 9870 or the like.

Still makes me wonder what they'll do in a few years once they have to roll over again.
 
Sottilde said:
And you could softmod the old ones with the right-angle memory layout! Man, good times.

Makes me wonder if they are really going to call the next series 7000 - could lead to confusion in the future once they release a 7500 series part, not to mention when we hit the 9000 series again, considering how many 9000-series chips there were (9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, etc.)
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i didn't think u could soft mod the 9500 pros. I thought it was only the 9500 non pros (i had one.. and soft modded it with rivatuner).

on topic, call me a pessimist but i really think 28nm delayed and at the earliest, the 7000 series will come out in october/november at the earliest... but... will we even have any games that require the new vid cards? Developers don't seem to care about PC gamers nowadays...
 
hesho said:
i didn't think u could soft mod the 9500 pros. I thought it was only the 9500 non pros (i had one.. and soft modded it with rivatuner).

on topic, call me a pessimist but i really think 28nm delayed and at the earliest, the 7000 series will come out in october/november at the earliest... but... will we even have any games that require the new vid cards? Developers don't seem to care about PC gamers nowadays...
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I believe you are thinking of the 9600. The 9600 was an actual different design, whereas the 9500 was a "cut down" version of the 9700, which is why you could unlock it.
 
I hope everything keeps on going smoothly. I definitely would prefer the cards to come out sooner rather than later, as I'm sure most people feel the same. Even if they don't come out somewhat early, I'm still gonna wait for the 7000 series to drop before replacing my trusty old 4850 512mb :D
 
Sottilde said:
I suppose. And the ending two numbers are different as well, AFAIK there was never differentiation in the tens place in the old generations, just 9700 and 9800, nothing like 9870 or the like.

Still makes me wonder what they'll do in a few years once they have to roll over again.
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just add another zero on the end, lol:

x8000, x18000, hd29000, hd38700, hd48700, hd58700, hd69700, etc.
 
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limitedaccess said:
I believe you are thinking of the 9600. The 9600 was an actual different design, whereas the 9500 was a "cut down" version of the 9700, which is why you could unlock it.
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umm.. no.. there was a 9500, 9500 pro, 9700 and 9700 pro. Heck, i had 9500 and unlocked it to a 9700 and then OC'd it to 9700 pro speeds. The only bad thing about it was that it made the drivers lose its signature.
 
hesho said:
umm.. no.. there was a 9500, 9500 pro, 9700 and 9700 pro. Heck, i had 9500 and unlocked it to a 9700 and then OC'd it to 9700 pro speeds. The only bad thing about it was that it made the drivers lose its signature.
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4648d1218009946-xtasy-256mb-radeon-9600-graphics-card-xtasy-256mb-radeon-9600-graphics-card.jpg


:confused:
 
Omegas said:
9800pro is mine so right there with ya! And I have a 9800GTX too.
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I had a 9800 Pro AIW (my first graphics card). Loved it and I miss the AIW series from AMD/ATI.

But seriously, if they get this out by May or June along side of Bulldozer, be sure to see a huge surge in AMD purchases.
 
i'm aware there is such a thing as a 9600.. my point is.. i had a 9500 that could unlock. I said i didn't believe the 9500 pro could be unlocked but only the 9500np. No idea how you thought i was thinking of a 9600 when i had a 9500 np.
 
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