AMD to turn to TSMC to save Bulldozer

AMD is rumoured to be seeking salvation with TSMC as it has been disappointed by the results of production at Global Foundries of the current x86 Bulldozer architecture. The current generation of Bulldozers hitting the market have been produced via Global Foundries’ HKMG  32nm process and AMD is far from happy with the stable maximum clock speeds achieved in addition to the power consumption and performance figures. Global Foundries has long been AMDs traditional CPU manufacturer but AMD wants to move to TSMC as DonanimHaber speculates that Global Foundries may be experiencing some issues with the current 32nm process.

AMD already works with TSMC on the 28nm Radeon architecture but TSMC does not have HKMG processing technology at the 32nm level yet so this future production will have to be for the next generation to give TSMC a chance to develop the process. The future products that could benefit from the TSMC production would be the newer Bulldozer known as Piledriver or the newer upcoming Trinity APUs which are going to try and press home that performance per watt advantage that AMD has in the fusion segment (seen on current pieces like the E-450 which gives far more performance than Intel Atom per watt).

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