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@ 2013/01/16Last year AMD confirmed that it was cancelling chunks of its orders with its old chum GlobalFoundries and was paying the outfit large sums of money for the right to go elsewhere.
Although it was suspected that TSMC would pick up the work, AMD kept quiet about it. This left many in a quandary. After all, Brazos was supposed to be out in the first half of the year.
Now, according to Extreme Tech, the company has let slip that Kabini and Temash are being built at TSMC, with the former expected to ship in Q2 of this year.
A new roadmap has seen the light of day where the launch date for Temash has been brought forward and shipping alongside Kabini. This means that AMD's second tablet SoC will compete with the next-generation quad-core Atom as well as chips from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Samsung's Exynos Octa.
What AMD is planning is that Kabini will take over AMD's A4 and A6 brands with the aim of closing the gap with notebooks. Until now the gap between netbooks and notebooks has not been that great. Brazos, which was 20-25 percent faster than Atom, wasn't powerful enough to qualify as a real notebook processor.
What is not clear is why AMD has been keeping all this to itself. It would appear that the company still wants to remain chums with GlobalFoundries, even after taking a lot of its business away.
GloFo was supposed to have picked up all its manufacturing, including CPUs and GPUs. What appears to be happening is that that AMD's long-term commitment to shifting its production to GF is unchanged. It might be that it spent a billion in fees and penalties this year to get a temporary exceptions to the original agreement.
Although it was suspected that TSMC would pick up the work, AMD kept quiet about it. This left many in a quandary. After all, Brazos was supposed to be out in the first half of the year.
Now, according to Extreme Tech, the company has let slip that Kabini and Temash are being built at TSMC, with the former expected to ship in Q2 of this year.
A new roadmap has seen the light of day where the launch date for Temash has been brought forward and shipping alongside Kabini. This means that AMD's second tablet SoC will compete with the next-generation quad-core Atom as well as chips from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Samsung's Exynos Octa.
What AMD is planning is that Kabini will take over AMD's A4 and A6 brands with the aim of closing the gap with notebooks. Until now the gap between netbooks and notebooks has not been that great. Brazos, which was 20-25 percent faster than Atom, wasn't powerful enough to qualify as a real notebook processor.
What is not clear is why AMD has been keeping all this to itself. It would appear that the company still wants to remain chums with GlobalFoundries, even after taking a lot of its business away.
GloFo was supposed to have picked up all its manufacturing, including CPUs and GPUs. What appears to be happening is that that AMD's long-term commitment to shifting its production to GF is unchanged. It might be that it spent a billion in fees and penalties this year to get a temporary exceptions to the original agreement.
