Posted on Thursday, January 21 2010 @ 16:08 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Bright Side of News performed a cost analysis of NVIDIA's upcoming Fermi GPU. The site estimates the chip will measure close to 240mm x 240mm, meaning NVIDIA will be able to get about 94 GF100 chips out of a single 300mm wafer. The yields of the Fermi A2 revision are said to be around 25 percent, which means the company may get about 24-26 functional dies per wafer, putting the cost of a single chip in the $208 range.
What is important for the price of the die is the end price for the consumer. While nVidia will find tests in which it beats both the single and dual-GPU HD 5870 and the HD 5970, going with the $599 price tag would be suicide in this economy. We expect to see a price of $549 or $499 for the high end part, probably named "GeForce 380" and $349-399 for the "GeForce 360". The problem is that $209 die is killing any margin on the part and nVidia cannot price themselves out of the market. Thus, we expect to see Quadro and Tesla business significantly subsidizing for the price of desktop GeForce boards, at least until nVidia gets its yields into the 40% range. The good part about nVidia and 40nm is that again, according to the sources in the know - the company currently also has one of highest yielding 40nm parts on the market, the 2nd generation Tegra.
More info
at BSN.
