Nvidia CFO: Manufacturing Yield Problems Are 'easing'

From PC World: Manufacturing problems that delayed the release of Nvidia's high-end Fermi chip family have eased, giving the company a boost in terms of sales and gross margin, the company's chief financial officer said Thursday.

Fermi is the code name for a graphics chip architecture designed for PCs and parallel processing systems. Originally set for release last year, the chips --which are produced using a cutting-edge 40-nanometer process -- were delayed by more than six months, largely due to manufacturing issues at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the contract chip maker that produces the chips for Nvidia.

Nvidia wasn't the only company to suffer yield problems with TSMC's 40-nanometer process. Other companies, including rival graphics chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, faced similar issues. But things are starting to look up.

"Supply constraints are finally easing," said David White, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia, during a quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

"We really had kind of a turning point somewhere around the December/January time frame, where we began seeing predictable improvements and those improvements continued throughout the first quarter," White said, referring to the first quarter of the company's fiscal year.

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