AMD to beat NVIDIA to 28nm GPUs in 2011

AMD seems to be set to ship its first 28nm GPUs in late 2011, probably ahead of NVIDIA. The news has been broken by interim CEO Thomas Seifert by saying that AMD would be at the forefront of the transition to 28nm.

“We have working silicon in-house and remain on-track to deliver the first members of what we expect will be another industry-leading GPU family to market later this year,” he said.

Seifert pointed out that AMD’s 28nm GPUs (codenamed Kepler) will be based on bulk process technology, in theory, both TSMC and Globalfoundries will be able to produce them. However, both foundries are different and the chip would have to be redesigned for each partner.

AMD VP Rick Bergman spoke out and said the new 28nm GPU series should have a significant effect on AMD’s revenue, similar to the first DirectX 11 cards.

More than two years ago, AMD pioneered 40nm technology with the launch of the HD 4770, but the transition to 28nm has been pushed back due to less demand due to the ‘economic downturn’. As such the 40nm process will be one of the most enduring production processes in the graphics industries’ recent history.