LOOK, OUT THE window, a squadron of flying pigs! No, really, they do fly, there are frozen lakes of fire being reported all over, and Nvidia's GT300 has finally taped out.
Our sources tell us that the GT300 is beginning it's 7 or 8 week long process through the very expensive machinery at TSMC. We said the target was a mid-July tapeout, and if you are very charitable with 'mid-', Nvidia hit it. A hair under a week ago, the chip had not taped out.
Now it is time to peer into the giant crystal ball of semiconductor scheduling. Lets assume that the chip taped out on work week 28, more or less July 15. TSMC runs 6-8 weeks for a 'hot lot', but our moles say currently it is much closer to 8 than 6. Add in just over 2 weeks for initial card build, bring-up, testing, debug, and making any fixes. Lets just call it 10 weeks, October 1 or so.
If everything goes perfectly, and the GT300 is literally bug free, or possibly having only minor bugs that Nvidia is totally confident can be fixed without causing any more problems, then they can start running production silicon.
From there, TSMC takes 10-12 weeks to run 40nm wafers, there is a lot to do on those parts. If we are optimistic and say 10 weeks, and add another two for the initial board manufacture and shipment, we will be at a total of 22 weeks out. This means if everything goes perfectly, not so much as a hiccup, we are looking at mid-December for the first syphilitic trickle of parts.
The chances of this happening are somewhere around zero though. Nvidia can't make GT215s in volume, and that chip is about 1/4 the size of GT300. Toss in that this is going to be their first GDDR5 part, their first DX11 part, and their first part on a new and untested architecture, and you are likely to have at least two spins.
Full Story :
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/07/...300-tapes-out/
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Miracles happen, GT300 tapes out!
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