AMD's Next GPU Could Be Made By Samsung: report
Samsung Electronics Ltd will start making new chips for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) next year, South Korea's Electronic Times reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources. The paper said Samsung's foundry business and Globalfoundries will jointly start producing a central processing chip as well as a graphics processing chip for AMD next year using their 14nm technology.
Samsung Electronics’ System LSI Foundry Business Department will start mass-producing AMD’s new GPU 'Greenland' starting from 2nd quarter of 2016, according to the report.
Greenland will be produced from Gen. 2 14-nano FinFET LPP (Low Power Plus) processing and its electricity efficiency per watt is 2 times higher compared to 28-nano GPU (code name: Fiji) that is currently being sold in markets.
Samsung already makes chips for companies such as Apple and Nvidia.
Both Samsung and AMD declined to provide any comment.
Seperately, Samsung is expected to start mass production of DRAM chips built using 18nm (1x) process technology in the second quarter of 2016.
With a modified version of double-exposure technology that Samsung's production equipment features, the company will move forward developing 15nm (1y) and 10nm (1z) DRAM technologies between the period of 2016 and 2020, the media reported.
A recent DRAMeXchange report indicated Samsung's 18nm process will be ready for mass production during 2016, while rival SK Hynix is expected to begin risk production for 18nm chips at the end of the year.