nVidia GT300 - GeForce GTX 380 yields are sub-30%

[Final8y]

nVidia GT300 - GeForce GTX 380 yields are sub-30%, now 2%

When we ran the TSMC yield story, we left owning you an explanation. Time to clear that too… why TSMC has "****** up" yields? Because the chip "some say it doesn't exist" has disastrous yields. We refuse to be drawn into the speculation does the GT300 exist or not, since we have enough data that would send nVidia Legal our way - but that was in the past, green guys learned better

According to our sources close to the [silicon] heart of the matter, the problem that nVidia has are yields in the 20 percentage range. You've guessed, that is waaay [insert several "a"] too low for launching volume production. Even when TSMC improves the leakage issues [the company claims that the leakage issues are now the thing of the past], mVidia will probably send a new revision of silicon - the yields have to be get high enough to earn a little bit of money.

Current situation is three faulty chips on one working one is much too much, since those faulty chips aren't exactly "GTX 360" or "slower Quadro FX" grade material. Some faulty parts might work under forced cooling, but the high leakage is an issue with the current graphics card layout. We won't go into the whole instability, does not work etc situation. As we all know, the graphics chips are at the worst possible position, facing down [unless you put them in testbed/desktop case]. With high leakage parts, thermal shockwave is sent through the organic packaging to the PCB [Printed Circuit Board] and can cause extensive failure, like nVidia learned with their $200 million mistake called "bad bumps" or simply "bumpgate".

We have the exact number, but in order to protect the parties involved, we are going to refrain from posting the exact yield figure on first batch of chips. All we can say is - not yet ready for production.

bsn*

Update:

September 15, 2009

THE SAGA of Nvidia's GT300 chip is a sad one that just took a turn for the painful when we heard about first silicon yields. Nvidia's execution has gone from bad to absent with low single digit yields.

A few weeks ago, we said that Nvidia was expecting first silicon back at the end of the week, the exact date was supposed to be Friday the 4th plus or minus a bit. The first bit of external evidence we saw that it happened was on the Northwood blog (translated here) and it was a day early, so props to NV for that. That lined up exactly with what we are told, but the number of good parts was off.

The translation, as we read it, says there were nine good samples that came back from TSMC from the first hot lot. That is below what several experts told us to expect, but in the ballpark. When we dug further, we got similar numbers, but they were so abysmal that we didn't believe it. Further digging confirmed the numbers again and again.

Before we go there though, lets talk about what a good die is in this case. When you get first silicon back, it almost always has bugs and problems. First silicon is meant to find those bugs and problems, so they can be fixed in succeeding steppings.

By 'good', we mean chips that have no process induced errors, and function as the engineers hoped they would. In other words not bug free, but no more errors than there were in the design. 'Good' in this sense might never power on, just that the things that came out of the oven were what was expected, no more, no less.

Several experts in semiconductor engineering, some who have overseen similar chips, were asked a couple of loaded questions: What is good yield for first silicon? What is good yield for a complex chip on a relatively new process? The answers ranged from a high of 50% to a low of 20% with a bunch of others clustered in the 30% range. Let's just call it one-third, plus or minus some.

The first hot lot of GT300s have 104 die candidates per wafer, with four wafers in the pod Nvidia got back a week and a half ago. There is another pod of four due back any day now, and that's it for the hot lots.

How many worked out of the (4 x 104) 416 candidates? Try 7. Yes, Northwood was hopelessly optimistic - Nvidia got only 7 chips back. Let me repeat that, out of 416 tries, it got 7 'good' chips back from the fab. Oh how it must yearn for the low estimate of 20%, talk about botched execution. To save you from having to find a calculator, that is (7 / 416 = .01682), rounded up, 1.7% yield.

Nvidia couldn't even hit 2%, an order of magnitude worse than the most pessimistic estimate. Ouch. No, just sad. So sad that Nvidia doesn't deserve mocking, things have gone from funny to pathetic.

At this point, unless it has a massive gain in yields on the second hot lot, there may not be enough chips to do a proper bring up and debug. This stunningly bad yield may delay the introduction of chip, adding to the current pain and bleak roadmap. If there aren't enough 'good' parts from the second hot lot, it may mean running another set, adding weeks to the total. Q1? Maybe not.

It is going to be very interesting to see what Nvidia shows off at 'Not Nvision' in a couple of weeks. Will it give the parts to the engineers to work on, or show them off as a PR stunt? We will know soon enough. In any case, the yields as they stand are sub-2%, and the status of the GT300 is far worse than we had ever imagined.S|A

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/09/15/nvidia-gt300-yeilds-under-2/

 

[Final8y]

Ignore them Kyle. There's been a massive influx of these types recently, and all the good intelligent posters have mostly gone as a result.

You won't get through to them, and they just want you to react anyway.

This forum has indeed seen a huge change.
Lucky im still in contact with a few that have left through other means.
Some of them have opened their own forums.

 

[Final8y]

Nvidia GT300 yields are under 2%

Updated!

September 15, 2009

THE SAGA of Nvidia's GT300 chip is a sad one that just took a turn for the painful when we heard about first silicon yields. Nvidia's execution has gone from bad to absent with low single digit yields.

A few weeks ago, we said that Nvidia was expecting first silicon back at the end of the week, the exact date was supposed to be Friday the 4th plus or minus a bit. The first bit of external evidence we saw that it happened was on the Northwood blog (translated here) and it was a day early, so props to NV for that. That lined up exactly with what we are told, but the number of good parts was off.

The translation, as we read it, says there were nine good samples that came back from TSMC from the first hot lot. That is below what several experts told us to expect, but in the ballpark. When we dug further, we got similar numbers, but they were so abysmal that we didn't believe it. Further digging confirmed the numbers again and again.

Before we go there though, lets talk about what a good die is in this case. When you get first silicon back, it almost always has bugs and problems. First silicon is meant to find those bugs and problems, so they can be fixed in succeeding steppings.

By 'good', we mean chips that have no process induced errors, and function as the engineers hoped they would. In other words not bug free, but no more errors than there were in the design. 'Good' in this sense might never power on, just that the things that came out of the oven were what was expected, no more, no less.

Several experts in semiconductor engineering, some who have overseen similar chips, were asked a couple of loaded questions: What is good yield for first silicon? What is good yield for a complex chip on a relatively new process? The answers ranged from a high of 50% to a low of 20% with a bunch of others clustered in the 30% range. Let's just call it one-third, plus or minus some.

The first hot lot of GT300s have 104 die candidates per wafer, with four wafers in the pod Nvidia got back a week and a half ago. There is another pod of four due back any day now, and that's it for the hot lots.

How many worked out of the (4 x 104) 416 candidates? Try 7. Yes, Northwood was hopelessly optimistic - Nvidia got only 7 chips back. Let me repeat that, out of 416 tries, it got 7 'good' chips back from the fab. Oh how it must yearn for the low estimate of 20%, talk about botched execution. To save you from having to find a calculator, that is (7 / 416 = .01682), rounded up, 1.7% yield.

Nvidia couldn't even hit 2%, an order of magnitude worse than the most pessimistic estimate. Ouch. No, just sad. So sad that Nvidia doesn't deserve mocking, things have gone from funny to pathetic.

At this point, unless it has a massive gain in yields on the second hot lot, there may not be enough chips to do a proper bring up and debug. This stunningly bad yield may delay the introduction of chip, adding to the current pain and bleak roadmap. If there aren't enough 'good' parts from the second hot lot, it may mean running another set, adding weeks to the total. Q1? Maybe not.

It is going to be very interesting to see what Nvidia shows off at 'Not Nvision' in a couple of weeks. Will it give the parts to the engineers to work on, or show them off as a PR stunt? We will know soon enough. In any case, the yields as they stand are sub-2%, and the status of the GT300 is far worse than we had ever imagined.S|A

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/09/15/nvidia-gt300-yeilds-under-2/

 

[Final8y]

Originally Posted by future Semi-Accurate article
The downward-spiraling wreckage of fail continues today as it has been revealed by reliable sources that NVIDIA's "next-gen" GT300 GPU will use more power than any GPU in the history of the industry, no doubt in a wreckless, zealous bout to reclaim some semblance of long-lost glory and prestige the company might have once had (though apparently too long ago for anyone to remember). Instead of any sort of responsible or daresay competent target power envelope for their last desperate effort in the highend market, NVIDIA has decided to abandon any restraint in gluttony for a staggering 400W consumption level just for the card alone, putting even entire desktop machines to shame.

The same source also revealed a few tidbits of the performance characteristics we might expect from such a ghastly beast, and despite high expectations for hardware that could bring an industrial-strength power generator to its knees, reality bites back to paint quite a different picture. Information reveals performance should be around 10% less than current-gen GTX 295 overall, despite completely broken and unusable driver suites powering the bloated predecessor. It should then come as no surprise that NVIDIA has not only lost the consumer-confidence crown as we've become accustomed to, but also the sheer performance race that it seems they alone care about these days. NVIDIA has truly become worthless even by their own standards. Perhaps they should have just renamed their old parts instead, since that seems to be one thing they're good at.

In other news, NVIDIA sucks, I hate them and they are big fat doodoo heads.

This has no link & is a preview of Charlie Demerjian's next article:
It could be fake.

 

[Final8y]

I think that last bit has been added by someone else.

 

[Final8y]

Just wait... spec might be "done" but nVidia will have their teeth into developers and so on, undermining DX11, I wouldn't be at all suprised to see DX updates either that make things more favorable to nVidia (don't equate that with making it less favorable for ATI)... I'm not saying this is a good thing, but don't underestimate the depth nVidia will go to or the clout they have to get things changed.

Roff there is no reason why DX11 updates will more favourable to NV, MS don't need NV for anything this time.

Yes NV will try to put the boot in at the developer level which is obvious.

 

[Final8y]

Mal X is joking.

 

[Final8y]

no i wasn't, i made a genuine **** up ..

but my basic point still stands........... it's too early to buy now, because something red hot is bound to come from Nvidia soon

You have been talking about the Mars in threads for ages you should know that its not worth the money in performance.

 

[Final8y]

Monitors are expensive, 2 alone could set you back £600.. i dont think multi monitor is going to become really popular just like that.

Yes 2 could set you back £600 if you wanted to pay that much for 2 as you can get 2 for half that amount & less.

 

[Final8y]

the only "multi" monitor gaming thats worth anything IMO is 2-4 HD projectors

3840x2160 any one?

If your paying.