AMD Cancels 28nm APUs, Starts From Scratch At TSMC

MrSeb writes "According to multiple independent sources, AMD has canned its 28nm Brazos-based Krishna and Wichita designs that were meant to replace Ontario and Zacate in the second half of 2012. The company will likely announce a new set of 28nm APUs at its Financial Analyst Day in February — and the new chips will be manufactured by TSMC, rather than its long-time partner GlobalFoundries. The implications and financial repercussions could be enormous. Moving 28nm APUs from GloFo to TSMC means scrapping the existing designs and laying out new parts using gate-last rather than gate-first manufacturing. AMD may try to mitigate the damage by doing a straightforward 28nm die shrink of existing Ontario/Zacate products, but that's unlikely to fend off increasing competition from Intel and ARM in the mobile space."