AMD May Suffer Tight Supply of Graphics Chips, Core-Logic Sets from TSMC

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices may suffer tight supply of its chipsets and graphics processors that are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in the second half of the year since its arch-rival Nvidia Corp. has booked a substantial portion of TSMC’s capacity to ramp up its Fermi-family graphics processing units (GPUs).

Although TSMC has acquired new equipment to improve its 40nm production line, there may not be enough 40nm capacity to manufacture enough GPUs and chipsets for ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia. According to a news-story by DigiTimes web-site, already placed a large amount of orders to TSMC in March and April, which may “squeeze AMD's order out of the already fully-loaded capacity”.

Nvidia plans to release new graphics processors for performance-mainstream and mainstream markets in July and August, which means that the chips are in production now. As the demand towards the GPUs will grow, Nvidia will have to increase production. Since the company is still a bigger customer for TSMC than AMD, which may give it certain priorities and cause supply issues for ATI graphics chips.

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