AMD Confirms 20nm Products Moved to FinFET, Warns on Q2’15 Earnings
by Ryan Smith on July 6, 2015 4:55 PM EST- Posted in
- AMD
- CPUs
- GlobalFoundries
- 20nm
- GPUs
- 16nm
- 14nm
- Financial Results
A little bit ago AMD sent out an announcement updating their official outlook for the second quarter of 2015. Though we don’t typically publish financial projections, the long and short of it is that AMD is looking to brace investors for a worse than expected Q2, after an already difficult Q1. Soft APU sales are being blamed for dragging down both revenue and gross margins, with AMD now expecting Q2 revenue to be down 8% sequentially, or around $950M, while the non-GAAP gross margin will be just 28%.
Much more interesting however is this little nugget of information buried in the announcement towards the end, offering a short update on AMD’s 20nm plans. AMD had previously announced their intentions to bring out some products at 20nm – these were most likely just APUs, with the only one we explicitly know about being the now-canceled Skybridge. In any case, AMD is now confirming that they have moved several of their 20nm designs to a “leading-edge FinFET node,” and as far as we know AMD no longer has any further 20nm projects in the pipeline. AMD’s press release does not state which foundries these products are now at – or indeed if they’re at multiple foundries – so it’s unknown at this time whether the work is at TSMC, GlobalFoundries, or split between the two of them.
The rationale for announcing this shift at this time comes from the financial aspect. AMD will be taking a $33M charge to their GAAP gross margin as part of the work required to move these designs to a new node. Jumping to FinFET nodes should improve the competitiveness of these products, and greatly so in the case of anything that needs to clock high or is otherwise heavily exposed to leakage, but of course this will take additional time and engineering resources in order to transition these products.
We expect AMD to discuss the issue in at least a bit more depth later next week, when they hold their Q2 earnings call on July 16th.
Source: AMD
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
62 Comments
View All Comments
Ryan Smith - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
For the purpose of transparency, 1 comment has been removed.Guys, could you please avoid profanity in our comments section?
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
You need a voting system for your users to do this for you.V900 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
That's an awful idea. Ideas and comments aren't cattle or electric kettles, that you can rate on 1-10 scale and arrange accordingly.The best ideas and most interesting comments are often unpopular ones.
The only thing a voting system would ensure, is an echo chamber of geeks with safe, uncontroversial middle class values.
cwolf78 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
"...safe, uncontroversial middle class values."That's all that matters.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Ya, no. Anandtech does not need trolls and fanboys abusing a comment voting system. That's pretty much all it's ever used for on tech sites.nikaldro - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Guys, it was me. Sorry.I was just saying:
I feel you. Italy has huge economic trouble too.
D. Lister - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Exactly. Case in point - Tom's. Voting encourages sock puppets, where fanboys make several fake accounts, to use them to upvote their own agendas.WinterCharm - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
+1 on the voting system. I'd love to see that.But perhaps only allow voting up, and flagging. The upvote/downvote system makes it too easy to turn the comment section into an echo chamber, and people often just vote down to disagree.
meacupla - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
APU sales are bad? you don't say...I don't think they are bad, I have one myself, but they just don't bring a whole lot to the table and are basically equal to celeron/pentium/i3 in price/performance. And when the important metrics are roughly equal, people end up buying intel due to brand recognition/reputation.
That whole "gaming on APU" is a big joke, so for all intents and purposes, the GPU portion is there to do DXVA. And intel can do DXVA just fine too.
The only reason I have an APU with FM2 socket, is because I wanted a cheap mobo with 8x native SATA ports for a NAS build, and intel only has a maximum of 6xSATA.
lmcd - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Actually, I've found differently. AMD is more willing to put resources into its low-end laptops, so a 2012 AMD A8 and 2012 Intel i7 perform equally in MOBAs at the same screen resolutions. Given that one was $400 and one was $800, and that i3 laptops are slowly crawling up in price or disappearing for higher-priced i5s, it shouldn't be surprising that AMD has a niche available to it.