Report: First AMD 28nm GPU Due in December

AMD may be unveiling its first 28 nm graphics chips before the end of the year.

Industry sources told Germany's heise online that AMD is targeting December 6 as a launch date.

There was no information which architecture these new GPUs will be based on, but there appears to be reason to believe that AMD may be unveiling performance desktop boards, which will become available in very limited quantities in December, heise said. Due to 28 nm transition problems, it may take some time until there is enough supply to meet demand.

If heise's sources are correct, then we assume that the announcement in December will be about AMD's Southern Island GPU family, which is expected to be called the Radeon HD 7000 series. We are expecting these GPUs to use Rambus' XDR2 DRAM memory instead of GDDR5, MIMD instructions instead of VLIW, support for PowerTune as well as x86 addressing and Partially Resident Textures.

TSMC reportedly increased its pricing for 28nm products as it noticed substantially higher demand than the company initially expected. Xbit labs speculated that TSMC's capacity for 28nm wafer production is only 7000 to 10,000 units during the current fourth quarter.

This isn't the first time we've heard about the Radeon HD 7000 series though. Read more about the AMD Radeon HD 7900 and XDR2 here.