AMD Llano GPUs are having yield issues

However, we have managed to confirm from multiple sources that we were wrong with the Bulldozer guesstimation and that the real culprit for AMD’s switch might be the fact that Llano APU yields are nowhere near where they should be. According from the sources familiar with the matter, the CPU side of this revolutionary 32nm SOI silicon is doing quite well, but there are a lot of headaches with the GPU part of it. This results in lower-than-expected yield and the shortage on the market – as AMD’s TSMC-manufactured APUs turned out to be a big hit, and the initial reviews of GlobalFoundries-made Llano were nothing else but remarkable (you can read our own review of AMD Fusion A8-3850 "Llano" APU here).

After all, this is the first GPU manufactured using Silicon-On-Insulator technology, since all previous GPUs from just about any company that ever did graphic chips and GPUs – were manufactured using bulk process at one of foundries such as TSMC. By shifting the GPU design from bulk to SOI, AMD and GlobalFoundries encountered a lot of issues, since Dresden facility relies on custom transistor libraries which were long before the pride and joy of AMD, now GlobalFoundries. Getting the Llano GPU part to seamlessly integrate onto the more than dozen generations of improved custom transistors at Dresden is a major task, and GlobalFoundries is still working on it.