Published in PC Hardware

AMD talks 20nm, FinFET 16nm - 14nm future

by on22 April 2014



Doesn’t reveal much

The market responded to AMD’s latest earnings figures and turnaround plan quite positively, bolstered by the fact that AMD was close to profitability in traditionally slow quarter. AMD did a few things right and the industry recognizes that it has a future.

During the chipmaker’s Q1 2014 conference call, AMD was asked by Christopher Rolland, FBR Capital Markets, about the company’s plans for the next manufacturing node following Kaveri and AMD’s SVP Lisa Su had something to say about it.

Lisa mentioned that all AMD products in 2014 will be 28nm, both graphics and AMD’s semi-custom APU business. This sort of dashes the hopes of many Radeon fans who were hoping for a 20nm graphics upgrade before the end of the year.


20nm still in design phase


Lisa confirmed that AMD is working on 20nm designs, but she did not reveal too many details.

“We (AMD) are, you know, actively in the design phase for 20-nanometer and that will come to production. And then clearly we'll go to FinFET. So that would be the progression of it,“ Su said.

With this in mind 20nm products can be expected in 2015 and 16nm FinFET manufacturing will be available from Samsung and GlobalFoundries later. AMD is definitely moving to FinFET after 20nm parts, as expected.

In case something radically doesn’t change, we can expect 16nm AMD parts in 2016, not earlier than that.


Upbeat on Beema


Lisa is happy that low-voltage Beema APUs are already shipping to customers as of Q1 2014 and we will have a chance to see the designs in Q2 2014 and onwards. Lisa was very positive on Beema and she expects many design wins for this part. We would expect to see some of these parts showing or shipping by late Q2 2014, roughly in time for Computex time. If you want a bit more precise date, we expect to see new Beema and Kaveri designs in mobile space by early June 2014.

Lisa Su went on record clearly stating that Mullins and Beema have plenty of design wins.

AMD14NB

“And so for Mullins and Beema, I mean I think we have a strong sort of design wins for those products. We expect those to launch in Q2 and build through the second half of the year” which gives you an idea what AMD has planned for the second part of 2014.”

You can check out the full transcript on Seeking Alpha

Last modified on 22 April 2014
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