Has Nvidia already finished the transition to 55 nanometers?
Jen-Hsun Hunag said: "We have 65nm inventory remaining, but everything we are ramping now is 55nm; and everything on the high-end that we are shipping now is 55nm."
Prior to this the Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider wanted to know how far TSMC got with swapping to the 55 nanometers process. This statement of the Nvidia president causes some questions related to the recently announced delay of the new graphics card of the GT200b generation which are supposed to be named GTX 270 and GTX 290, since in our opinion the GT200b chips are definitively part of Nvidia's high-end product array.
So there are several possibilities:
- Nvidia differentiates between high-end and enthusiast in regards of stored products - then the GT200b would, as a replacement of the GTX 280 and GTX 260, be filed under enthusiast and just the G92 chips on Geforce 9800 GTX+ & Co. represent the high-end products.
- The report about the delay is wrong and GTX 270, GTX 290 and possibly GX2 will hit the markets before early 2009.
- Nvidia performed the transition to 55 nanometers, but, because of the unexpectedly strong competition by AMD's HD 4850 and HD 4870, hasn't sold the expected amount of units. Now Nvidia and the board partners have to reduce the number of cards in stock to prevent an obsolescence that would harm the values of the companies' shares. In this case only the rest of the 65 nm GT200s would be sold currently.
Which thesis is correct, cannot be said for sure at the moment. It is not even clear if there could possibly be other reasons for the confusion Huang's statement during the
Conference Call caused.
Comment this story! (0 Comment)
