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Fermi cards when when when

official launch date is march 26th, when they will be available to buy who knows.
my opinion is that there will be limited availability on launch day with supplies picking up about 4-6 weeks later. possibly (shock horror) slightly quicker than supplies picked up on the ATI 5800 series cards
 
bru said:
official launch date is march 26th, when they will be available to buy who knows.
my opinion is that there will be limited availability on launch day with supplies picking up about 4-6 weeks later. possibly (shock horror) slightly quicker than supplies picked up on the ATI 5800 series cards
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Thats quite literally impossible, Nvidia produce their cards in the same factory with the same limited supply, Nvidia have significantly lower yields, which means, roughly speaking for every wafer AMD make, they can get around 80-100 5870's, the numbers aren't clear on Fermi's, but the lowest guestimates are quite literally in the 0-10range per wafer, the most optimistic suggest around the 40 mark. Its likely somewhere between 15-25 including salvaged parts.

There shouldn't be any production drop from TSMC smegging up equipment, which quite literally killed $50million's worth of wafers and 6 weeks entire supply. However, the weekly amounts available from AMD in the first week, and currently, will dwarf the supply Nvidia can produce and that will NOT change at any point.

As for when, availability at launch is incredibly unlikely, the majority of partners(maybe all maybe not) don't have the reference plans yet, which means they are a good 6 weeks out from making cards, minimum. Its plausible the plans have only gone out to their closest partners so only 1-2 companies get supply for launch, this would be an amount in the 10k's worldwide and for OEM's. Even thats unlikely as theres no reason to give only 2 companies the plans, the chips only, maybe, the plans, makes zero sense. Which suggests a mid April date as the earliest really possible for any supply at all, and no volume till May is the current rumour, and that "volume" will be laughable.
 
So we could well be looking at summer time for availability which lets face it, is the kipper season for gaming. I suppose then at least people will be ready for q3 game releases. :)
 
Ouch, so Nvidia are apparently confirming the past yeild issues, but more importantly also confirming that they still haven't been resolved!
 
yup...the bit i found interesting was
“By the time we begin launching Fermi, which is in volume production today, and which will really become mainstream for us in Q2 – Q3 from a volume standpoint, the yield issues will be past us,” added Mr. White.
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its not the first time someone at Nvidia has said that Fermi is in volume production already, so i can only take it that they are going ahead with their production run with the dire yields (10-15% guesstimate)

but at least they reckon by may-June time things will improve unless of course tsmc **** it up even again
 
I was talking to a guy using the 40nm process in his work.

They released a MAJOR update for the node.

In the process they changed most of the design rules, he seemed a little ****ed at that ^-^
 
THe problem is, both Nvidia and TSMC have released multiple news reports in the past 6 months talking about 40nm being fixed, being ramped up massively, Fermi being in full production, Fermi yields NOT being an issue at all, etc, etc, etc.

Its called, appeasing the analysts who somewhat control stock prices, which have dipped since their financial results. AS I said, while they appear positive, a bit of profit and increase in revenue, they are far worse increases than Intel/AMD for the same period and they've increased because they went down so significantly last year. Lots of analysts are rating Nvidia badly, trying to get the word out stock won't be an issue when they finally launch, well, thats a very important goal, for TSMC aswell, if its true or not, who the hell knows.

THe problem with rules changing with a MAJOR 40nm fix being found, is that Nvidia clearly will not be able to apply such a massive change, it would be incredibly unlikely such a change would be fixable in a simple stepping change, even then thats a 2 month respin process and another 6 weeks for volume production. So Fermi, is smegged in that sense. THeir lower end derivitives might have better success, they've not been sent to have the first spins made, so they are still at the point they can change the masks and do a full redesign of the layout before they send the design in, though that still takes time and after they do so, they'll still be 3 months away from getting any chips back with the tape out and volume.

The low and mid end will still be 60% larger than AMD, so still have lower yields(its theoretically possible, but the bigger the chip the lower the yield has always been true in reality), because the size of the core increase will stay similar most likely, with a 192-256 mid end, and a stupid low end. SO they again will be more expensive with not great yields in comparison.

Apart from the likelyhood of complete BS from TSMC about yield fixes, the most likely ones are simply giving better design rules out, to compensate for issues, and I wouldn't be surprised if they basically said, here's what AMD did to negate are utter uselessness, go do it yourselves. IE leave more space for our variable size transistors to work, and use 2-4via's per transistor, rather than one. AS I said though, Fermi needs a proper respin to use those idea's, not a small quick respin. Its highly unlikely they've got their immersion lithography suddenly working more accurately. THe equipment they've brought lately is for 22nm and beyond, not 40-28nm.
 
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