Newsgroup: it.comp.giochi.action
Titolo: Nvidia Maxwell GM200 Titan II/GTX 980 Ti Slipping To 2016.

According to a new report TSMC has just completed a $47 million US 
dollar deal to purchase additional engineering equipment and machinery. 
The new equipment should help the company bring upcoming manufacturing 
process technologies closer to market. The company expects to begin 
volume production of 16nm FinFET in late Q2, early Q3 of 2015.
 
TSMC had originally scheduled 16nm FinFET mass production for Q1 2015. 
Mainly to satisfy Apple’s A9 chip demands. However TSMC fell short of 
meeting the original schedule and ended up moving volume 16nm 
production all the way to late Q2 early Q3. The company now seems to be 
targeting June/July of 2015 for 16nm FinFET.  And a quarter or two 
later for 16nm FinFET+.
 
This brings us to the topic of next generation graphics cards. Namely 
Nvidia’s “big daddy” Maxwell GM200 GPU. Which should go into the GTX 
980 Ti/ Titan II or any other name Nvidia decides to give it. According 
to earlier reports this GPU was originally scheduled to debut on 16nm 
in 2015, a leak later reaffirmed by semiaccurate. Nvidia’s plan for 
16nm GPUs was pretty much the same plan for GM204. Which is to 
introduce the new products in the holiday season. The most profitable 
season typically in the semiconductor industry and many others.
 
GM200 isn’t the only GPU Nvidia has planned for 16nm either. The 
company still wants to introduce a second revision of GM204 ( GTX 980 
and GTX 970 ) in a 16nm flavor. As well as another smaller GM206 GPU 
which was originally rumored to debut alongside GM204. So we know of at 
least three Maxwell GPUs which Nvidia is working on. Unfortunately 
however the delays will put a sizable dent of roughly 3-6 months of 
delay into Nvidia’s 16nm plans. And the plans of any other company 
which has 16nm products in the works. Making these TSMC 16nm FinFET 
delays all the more adverse.
 
It typically takes anywhere from four months to a year for a product to 
make it from mass production to market availability. This leaves a very 
tight 2-3 month window for 16nm graphics cards to show up in late 2015.
 
 But even then it’s unlikely that we’ll see large chips due to the 
typically less favorable yields at the early life-span of any new 
process node. This is not unprecedented as Nvidia suffered through 
serious 28nm yield issues in 2012. Which resulted in the company 
delaying its entire 28nm GPU lineup. And releasing its first 28nm GPU, 
the GK104 in the GTX 680, three months after AMD had released Tahiti in 
the HD 7970 and 7950.
 
Which is why we didn’t see Nvidia’s GK110 “big Kepler” GPU show up in a 
consumer level product until more than 5 quarters after 28nm went into 
volume production. That is if you count the one thousand dollar GTX 
Titan as a consumer product.  28nm went into mass production in October 
of 2011, the GTX Titan was released in February of 2013. It took Nvidia 
nearly tow years after TSMC began 28nm volume production to introduce 
its large chip in a reasonably priced consumer product for the first 
time. Which was in the form of the GTX 780 in June of last year.
 
GM200 is Nvidia’s large Maxwell GPU. Similar to how GK110 was Nvidia’s 
large Kepler GPU. And GF100 was that same class of chip for Fermi.
 
 These have historically been massive 500mm²+ chips. The sort of chips 
that you don’t want to necessarily put into production on a new node 
with dicey yields.
 
According to TSMC, the 16nm process should account for 7-9% of total 
revenue in Q4 2015 for the company.  Which means that if any 16nm 
products make it to market in late 2015 they’ll be very limited in 
quantity. According to Semiaccurate the first 16nm GPU from Nvidia will 
be a die shrink of GM204 (GTX 980 and GTX 970) rather than a new GM200 
GPU. Which makes the possibility of a GM200 based product arriving in 
2015 even more far fetched.
 
It’s not all bad news however, although Nvidia has allegedly decided to 
skip the 20nm node and go straight to 16nm instead. AMD on the other 
hand has confirmed that it has 20nm products on the way for 2015. With 
16nm products planned for 2016 as well. In the case of AMD 16nm delays 
shouldn’t affect the company’s plans as much since they already have 
20nm products coming to address the market in 2015.
 
While Nvidia really doesn’t have any intermediary products planned 
between 28nm and 16nm. Which should see the company either fighting it 
out with 28nm products against AMD’s 20nm chips or suffer through some 
horrific 16nm yields in order to stay competitive. Which isn’t entirely 
out of the question, since Nvidia did suffer through some terrible 
yields before. When the company introduced GF100 (GTX 480) for example 
back in 2010 to remain competitive. The third possibility would entail 
Nvidia reconsidering 20nm and redesigning their 16nm floor-plans to be 
compatible for 20nm production. Which is the least likely scenario due 
to the extensive cost and time requirement associated.

per me cavolata...
 
non ci credono che dal 2014 al 2016 non esce nulla di top di gamma...