http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/13/08/2012/54326/28nm-short-into-q4-says-nvidia.htm
David Manners
Monday 13 August 2012 08:00
28nm will remain in short supply for the rest of the quarter, says Nvidia, which cites yield as one of the constraints on supply.
“We’re expecting to be supply constrained throughout this quarter,” says Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, “obviously it’s a combination of allocation, yield and the market demand.”
Other companies like Qualcomm and Altera have also complained about the shortage of 28nm parts but have avoided blaming yield problems, preferring to cite a shortage of capacity.
However Huang said: “TSMC are working really, really hard to improve yield,” suggesting thast yield remains a problem.
Qualcomm has said it expects 28nm supply to match demand in Q4. Huang is not so confident. All he would say about the supply situation post Q3 was: “We’ll report on that in Q4.”
Huang emphasises: “So far market demand seems very strong.”
“Yields are improving,” concludes Huang, “and we’d like them to improve even faster because when you improve yield faster with our wafer buy business model, your units grow and your margins grow.”