[via semiaccurate.com, originally written by Charlie Demerjian]
WITH ANOTHER LAUNCH of the Nvidia GT300 Fermi GF100 GTX480 upon us, it is time for an update on the status of that wayward part. Production parts have been coming back from TSMC for several weeks now, and the outlook for them is grim.
We first got word that production A3 GF100s were back in Santa Clara near the end of January. When enough of them rolled off the line to characterize the silicon, we hear there were no parties in Santa Clara. For those not interested in the ‘why’ side of things, the short answer is that the top bin as it stands now is about 600MHz for the half hot clock, and 1200MHz for the hot clock, and the initial top part will have 448 shaders. On top of that, the fab wafer yields are still in single digit percentages.
That said, the situation is far more nuanced than those three numbers suggest, and the atrocious yields are even after the chip has been downclocked and defective units fused off. To make matters even worse, the problems that caused these low yields are likely unfixable without a complete re-layout. Lets look at these problems one at a time.
Click here to read the rest of the article at semiaccurate.com
