Posted on Tuesday, May 18 2010 @ 21:20 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
reports AMD chipsets are in tight supply as the company has ordered TSMC to allocate some of the 55nm capacity reserved for chipsets to GPU production in order to ease current GPU shortages. The shortage is unlikely to be resolved before the end of the September.
In the second half of 2009, AMD's 40nm ATI Radeon HD 5000 series faced a serious shortage due to low yields on TSMC's 40nm process, as a result, graphics card makers turned to placing orders for 55nm ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPUs. However, since AMD took a conservative attitude toward future 55nm GPU sales after the launch of 40nm GPUs, both the company's 40nm and 55nm GPUs ended up suffering from shortages, according to previous reports.
In the first quarter of 2010, since TSMC's 40nm yields were still unable to rise significantly, AMD decided to shift part of its 55nm capacity allocation for chipsets to produce of 55nm GPUs, which provide a gross margin of about 40-50%, to raise its profits, the sources noted.
