Are TSMC's Yield Issues Going to Cause GPU Costs to Rise?

[Rob Williams]

TSMC might be the world's largest independent semi-conductor company, but the way things are going lately, it's hard to know if that's going to be the case in a few years. In recent months, much has come to light regarding low yields on its 40nm processes, and according to industry-tracking site DigiTimes, the problem is unlikely to be solved anytime before May. If that's true, it's not only bad for the company, but other companies as well. Not to mention, us consumers.

​

You can read the rest of our post here.

 

[Kougar]

That's a silly question! Yield directly affects chip costs, if the yields were great they could sell many more of them at lower prices and not only afford to do so, but come out with higher profits too.

I think the better question is if TSMC's perpetual yield issues are enough to make such companies all but inevitably switch to Global Foundries. ATI is still not getting enough chips back from TSMC to meet demand everywhere, so NVIDIA is by far not the only one.

ATI has already raised prices because of this. Look at the 5850... launched at $259, then ATI raised it to $279 to try and curb demand and admitted to doing so. Today, over two months later? Prices begin at $310 and go on up.

 

[evilives34]

unfortunately, i knew this was coming,and i think a lot of other people did too. The smaller the chips get the harder its going to get good yields with today chip manufacturing and materials. I pretty sure that all the kinks will be ironed out as they go along, you do learn though mistakes