ATI turns to UMC for 90nm R-series GPUs

DigiTimes reports ATI has placed orders with UMC to produce its R521, RV531 and RV516 GPUs using 90nm technology. These GPUs are similar to the upcoming R520, RV530 and RV515 GPUs and it's believed ATI placed orders with UMC because TSMC gives them too low yields.

On September 21, ATI announced that TSMC is in volume production of the Radeon X1800 (codenamed R520), Radeon X1600 (codenamed RV530) and Radeon X1300 (codenamed RV515) series chips. However, the sources also indicated that low yield rates at TSMC has given UMC an opportunity to win 90nm orders from ATI.

Mass production of these chipsets at UMC will happen by the end of this year.

There's also some information about ATI's products lineup. The Radeon X1600 and X1300 will come in two versions; XT and PRO for the former and PRO and LE for the latter. The Radeon X1800 will be available in XT, XL and LE.

On the other hand NVIDIA is getting ready to start production of a 90nm G7x (G71?) chip at TSMC. This may be a higher clocked 90nm version of the GeForce 7800 GTX and it is expected between the end of this year and early next year.