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AMD, Nvidia Reportedly Tripped Up On Process Shrinks

Posted by Soulskill on from the stupid-physics-getting-in-the-way dept.

itwbennett writes: In the fierce battle between CPU and GPU vendors, it's not just about speeds and feeds but also about process shrinks. Both Nvidia and AMD have had their move to 16nm and 20nm designs, respectively, hampered by the limited capacity of both nodes at manufacturer TSMC, according to the enthusiast site WCCFTech.com. While AMD's CPUs are produced by GlobalFoundaries, its GPUs are made at TSMC, as are Nvidia's chips. The problem is that TSMC only has so much capacity and Apple and Samsung have sucked up all that capacity. The only other manufacturer with 14nm capacity is Intel and there's no way Intel will sell them some capacity.

47 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. I got an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Build your own fab

    1. Re:I got an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      ain't nobody got time for that!

    2. Re:I got an idea by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Informative

      And get owned by intel's illegal monopolistic deals with OEMs?

      Been there, done that. Signed: AMD.

    3. Re:I got an idea by alexander_686 · · Score: 2

      Maybe yes, maybe no.

      Fabs are incredibly capital intensive. If you build one you sort of need to run it at full hilt to make money off of them. And then you are on the tread mill of always having to build another one to have the latest and greatest.

      I am not saying they should not build it, just that it is a completely different beast then design and marketing of their chips. You can't do it half way. FYI, almost everybody agrees that the reason why the x386 dominates today is not because Intel had the best or most efficient designs for microchips but that it had the best run and most efficient fabs. Intel has publicly said it want to be the "McDonalds" on the CPU world – standardized and cheap.

      Are AMD and Navida ready to bit off such a big chuck? I doubt it.

    4. Re:I got an idea by erice · · Score: 2

      Build your own fab

      While not a bad idea, it doesn't solve the problem. When you have your own fab, you are pretty much obligated to use it. Even when it is late, low on capacity, or a full node behind. You can reduce this risk by throwing a lot of money at R&D and spare capacity. However, this is more than a little bit expensive. That is why AMD doesn't have a captive fab anymore. They can't afford it.

      TSMC is in the business of making chips. They don't make money if they can't make chips. I haven't heard that Apple or Samsung have an unexpected block buster products at 14nm. That means that either TSMC grossly underestimated demand at 14/16nm/20nm (not likely) or they are having manufacturing problems that are slowing production. If it were just TSMC screwing up, you would bet UMC other fabs would exploiting this opportunity to steal business. Since this isn't happening, it is good bet that a hypothetical AMD or Nvidia fab would have the same production trouble.

    5. Re:I got an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Build your own fab

      AMD did exactly that. Intel responded by raising their prices and offering "discounts" to vendors in exchange for refusing to stock any AMD products, ensuring that AMD's production capacity was wasted because customers found it incredibly difficult to find anyone willing sell them (despite having a large performance, price and temperature advantage over Intel at the time). AMD took Intel to court over this and won, but Intel managed to drag the case out so ridiculously long that AMD weren't able to keep their foundries. Their R&D took a big hit too.

    6. Re:I got an idea by alexander_686 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I read an interview of John Sculley, ex Apple CEO, 10 years after he left Apple. (There is a link to it somewhere here on Slashdot. ) He said that one of his great mistakes was to choose Motorola's PowerPC RISC chip over Intel's x386 design. All of Apple engineers pulled for the Motorola chip, pointing to its better architecture. And it was true, for a given bit of silicon Motorola was better than Intel.

      Except that Intel's fabs were so much more efficient than Motorola's, they were able to deliver more powerful chips at a cheaper price even with poorer design. Which allowed them to make fat profits, which they plowed back into newer fab plants, which let them sprint past Motorola.

    7. Re:I got an idea by unixisc · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe yes, maybe no.

      Fabs are incredibly capital intensive. If you build one you sort of need to run it at full hilt to make money off of them. And then you are on the tread mill of always having to build another one to have the latest and greatest.

      I am not saying they should not build it, just that it is a completely different beast then design and marketing of their chips. You can't do it half way. FYI, almost everybody agrees that the reason why the x386 dominates today is not because Intel had the best or most efficient designs for microchips but that it had the best run and most efficient fabs. Intel has publicly said it want to be the "McDonalds" on the CPU world – standardized and cheap.

      Are AMD and Navida ready to bit off such a big chuck? I doubt it.

      Fully agree w/ this - it costs a ton of cash to just build the fab, then quite some time before they are in full production, and only after they've run for a few years and been depreciated that their products are profitable. By then, it's usually time to shrink, but by now, at ~15nm, there ain't too much scope for that.

      But in addition to that, the costs of running a fab are recurring - even if there is no demand for a product, the fab has to be kept running, thereby piling on inventory. Which is a good reason why a lot of companies either started of as, or later became, fabless. The only one who is profitable is Intel, as a result of being a full 2 generations ahead of the competition. Reason? Because they make volumes of products that they can sell in the market profitably, thereby enabling themselves to put in a whole ton of cash into newer fabs, better equipment and everything else geared towards process improvements.

    8. Re:I got an idea by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Funny

      AMD: They are fab-u-less!

      FTFY. :-)

    9. Re:I got an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try reading how Intel paid Dell billions in cash to not use AMD chips. Mike Dell actually wanted to go with AMD, but Intel's massive cash infusions proved too delicious to ignore.

    10. Re:I got an idea by Trongy · · Score: 5, Informative

      AMD did not own the sever space. With the introduction of AMD64, they had superior CPUs. However, thanks to intel's illegal monopolistic deals with OEMs they didn't get the sales and profits to plough back into R&D and sustain their technical lead.

    11. Re:I got an idea by alexander_686 · · Score: 2

      Sculley said it was his mistake - which is not saying that Amelio didn't say it as well. Here is the old Slashdot link.

      http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...

    12. Re:I got an idea by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well that too but there's a long feedback loop from profits to production capacity, building a new process facility typically takes 3-4 years. AMD held the lead from mid 1999 (launch of Athlon) to early 2006 (launch of Intel Core). First they had to make some money on that achievement, this still being the dotcom days the stock flew through the roof until the dotcom bubble burst in early 2000. Everything tech-related came crashing down, you could buy AMD stock in 2002 for less than in 1999 despite their excellent products at the time. AMD probably had a helluva time finding funding to expand.

      So if you don't get serious ramp-up capital until 2002, well you're not going to get it online until 2005-2006 and if you look at the stock charts then January 2006 is when they peaked. All looked bright, AMD still had the best product and finally the production capacity to knock Intel out of the driver's seat. Then Intel Core gave them a real kick to the nuts. They just couldn't sell as much as they had planned for, the financial burden from the fabs was dragging the whole company down. That's the trouble with betting too much on growth, when you fail you fail hard. But then everyone had been shouting build more, take down Intel. Hindsight is easy.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Consumers tripped up on exclusive deals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Who cares about the designs when my AMD GPU doesn't run software properly because Nvidia has a special deal with that software company? And visa-versa? Stop worrying about design and fix the real problem...your current products are unreliable because of greed.

  3. Is that why... by moondo · · Score: 2

    So, this is why we can't have nice things?

  4. bean counters ruin another company by banbeans · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who didn't see not having their own fabs was going to bite them in the rear?
    Only a bunch of bean counters would not have seen this coming.

    1. Re:bean counters ruin another company by TWX · · Score: 2

      It's a lot simpler to sit down at a CAD workstation to do layout design than it is to manufacture that design.

      Trouble is, at the rate we're going, the manufacturers won't need us for very much longer, especially if economies in other countries that don't respect IP become strong enough that those manufacturers can sell unlicenced production there, even if they can't sell it here. I'm thinking of that happy little picture of the world with a circle over portions of South and East Asia and the large islands in the Indian Ocean where half of the population of the planet lives.

      We don't need to manufacture everything domestically, but we need to be capable of manufacturing everything domestically, even if we outsource a lot of it. Being capable is not simply a technical matter, it's also an economic one in that if it becomes too expensive to start up production if a foreign source is lost to us, then we effectively can't produce the thing anymore.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:bean counters ruin another company by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Pretty much this.

      The people who own that fabrication capacity are selling it to the highest bidder. Or the one who invested the money to build it.

      If you don't control your own production, don't be surprised when you have to wait in line.

      But don't act all shocked that the 3rd party who actually builds your products can't guarantee your stuff gets built.

      This gets a big "duh".

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:bean counters ruin another company by DarkOx · · Score: 3

      How are they bitten exactly. Neither one of them can get chips. There is therefore no real competitive disadvantage. They only way I see them getting bitten is if Intel decides they really want a slice of the high end GPU market; ups their game on the design side AND allocates their 14nm facilities to GPUs in favor of cranking out more CPUs.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    4. Re:bean counters ruin another company by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

      How are they bitten exactly. Neither one of them can get chips.

      Well, then it's a good thing there's only two of them.

      A third company who owned some fabrication facilities would completely screw things up.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    5. Re:bean counters ruin another company by Bengie · · Score: 2

      AMD sold off their fab some time around 2009.

    6. Re:bean counters ruin another company by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Well, then it's a good thing there's only two of them.

      I think the bean counters might deserve some credit though. Don't you think somebody asked "what happens to our business if things go wrong at TSMC?" and the answer was well our chief competition also uses them so there will probably be little impact to our market share, they won't be able to supply anyone with chips either.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    7. Re:bean counters ruin another company by knightghost · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I really don't see that. Manufacturing in the USA typically runs Lean and often Cell based with process changes made in minutes. The people also tend to have a wider range of skills and experience. The states with unions pretty much don't do any more manufacturing.

      Outsourcing only works from 2 fundamentals - ignoring IP (theft) and currency manipulation.

    8. Re:bean counters ruin another company by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Outsourcing only works from 2 fundamentals - ignoring IP (theft) and currency manipulation.

      You left out government regulation, taxes, and pollution controls.

    9. Re:bean counters ruin another company by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Who didn't see not having their own fabs was going to bite them in the rear?
      Only a bunch of bean counters would not have seen this coming.

      Fabs are expensive. As in, REALLY expensive. They cost $1B to build, and easily $10+B to equip (or more). So you're already in the hole many billions of dollars and you haven't produced anything yet.

      Oh, and there's a clock ticking away, because you're going to need to spend another $10+B to buy ALL NEW EQUIPMENT to handle the upcoming node shrink.

      The only way to do that is to have a fab running continuously churning out product, and to find uses for the older node equipment (which now has to be discounted some because people want to use the new shiny equipment).

      Fabs like TSMC however have been major innovators because it allowed fabless companies like NVidia, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and hundreds more to exist without having to make major capital investments in fabs but get the technology out there. Imagine you want to do a chip, and now you need to convince your investors that to make it, you need to spend $15+B. Versus a few million.

    10. Re:bean counters ruin another company by hendrips · · Score: 2

      Considering the astonishing rate that AMD was losing money on its fabs, and the fact that upgrading a single fab to a new process node would cost more than AMD's entire market capitalization, I'm going to have to side with the bean counters here.

      AMD coundn't even keep its production facilities running. How could they possibly have kept up with TSMC - the world's premier foundry operator?

    11. Re:bean counters ruin another company by SydShamino · · Score: 2

      Also, exploiting cultural differences. You won't get many Americans willing to live and eat in a dorm attached to the manufacturing plant, 800 miles from family, so they really have no distractions but work. (And of course you mention regulation, but having those workers for 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week, for 50 weeks straight can't hurt the bottom line - just the workers.)

      --
      It doesn't hurt to be nice.
    12. Re:bean counters ruin another company by Guspaz · · Score: 2

      Intel's integrated GPUs are pretty decent these days. At this point, they tend to outperform lower end discrete nVidia/AMD GPUs of a similar generation. Intel's Iris Pro 5200 GPU, for example, performs slightly faster than an nVidia GeForce 640. Each generation has seen Intel's chips creep slightly higher up the nVidia/AMD product line: it's not long since they creeped past the x30 tier of nVidia GPUs.

    13. Re:bean counters ruin another company by TehZorroness · · Score: 2

      I really don't see that. Manufacturing in the USA typically runs Lean and often Cell based with process changes made in minutes. The people also tend to have a wider range of skills and experience. The states with unions pretty much don't do any more manufacturing.

      I don't know if all shops work this way, but I work as a CNC lathe toolsetter and programmer in a non-union shop in New Jersey and what you say is pretty accurate based on my experience. Most of our operators will typically run a cell of 2 to 4 machines. As long as there are more contracts than we have machines (which is always, or we'd be out of business) we are constantly breaking down setups and retooling our machines for the next production run. We produce hundereds of different parts for some of our clients, and print revisions happen somewhat regularly. When we get a revised print, it usually only means we have to change a couple numbers in the g-code to define the new toolpath and tool the machine exactly how we did before the revision. While it may present an oppertunity to re-negotiate, It is hardly something we are willing to loose a contract over.

      Now, I'm sure making microprocessors is quite a bit more sophisticated, but I can imagine that the biggest difference between different model CPUs built on the same process would be the code controlling the machine (automagically generated by CAM software from a CAD model), and they can probably be switched without making significant physical changes to the machine itself. If I remember correctly, it can easily take a couple years of calibration before a fab can produce anything reliable consistantly. I imagine once those machines are set up, they probably spend most of their time worrying about an earthquake happening on the other side of the world, not about loading a new program onto it.

      - Chinese companies have the capability of rapidly adjusting manufacturing processes as a result of last minute design changes. While technically US companies have this ability, most companies just won't do it (in some cases labor unions are the biggest hindrance because they only permit their members to do one job and one job only, and instead of re-allocating existing labor, they're forced to hire new people, which just isn't economical or practical.)

      - Even though it is possible to find the required skill set in the US, often the workers you do find aren't as good at a particular task as some people who live overseas and do that kind of work all the time. For example, how many Americans do you know that are good at operating the machinery used for making textiles? Chances are, they're harder to find than in China, but if you really wanted to get it done here, you could, just you'll pay more, it'll take longer, and the craftsmanship probably won't be as good.

      I'd never trust any of this crap. All of these captains of industry complain about how few skilled workers we have here in the US - be it tech, manufacturing, whatever. All they really want is to pay as little for the labor as possible, and as long as it costs less in China, they will keep making up excuses and funding think-tanks to support their point of view. If they were trying to have their products manufactured with the best craftsmanship possible, by the most skilled workers they could employ, they wouldn't be outsourcing them to the cheapest place they could find. I'm not going to be that guy that says we do everything best in the US, but doing things best is not why we are outsourcing to China either.

    14. Re:bean counters ruin another company by Solandri · · Score: 2

      If you don't control your own production and aren't willing to pay more for it than anyone else, don't be surprised when you have to wait in line.

      FTFY. nVidia and AMD could easily jump ahead of Apple and Samsung in TSMC's queue - they just have to offer to pay more than Apple and Samsung are willing to pay. All that's happening is that they've made a conscious decision that it's more cost-effective to pay less and have their 16nm/20nm products come out later and deal with unhappy customers, than to pay more to make their customers happier.

    15. Re:bean counters ruin another company by unixisc · · Score: 2
      The fabless model works fine provided 2 things happen:

      1. The customer (AMD/Nvidia/Apple/Qualcomm) are accurate in forecasting what they will need, and have a consistent demand at the fab, not varying horrendously, as many smaller players do

      2. The customer is not dwarfed by other bigger customers during times of allocation. When market demand is high and semiconductor prices go up, then fabs usually pick their top tier customers, have them allocate which products need to run uninterrupted, and do that. Smaller customers fall by the wayside.

      Chances are neither Apple nor Nvidia would face that predicament. I'm not so sure about AMD.

  5. Actually...about Intel... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    I certainly wouldn't expect to see it happen(well, maybe with a very low probability); but it wouldn't surprise me if someone at Intel Legal has written up an "AMD/Foundry Contract Opinion.doc" and squirreled it away somewhere.

    Given that AMD isn't terribly threatening anymore, we aren't in the Netburst vs. A64 beatdown era now, Intel is probably saved a fair amount of unpleasant antitrust inquiry(US and abroad) by AMD at comparatively limited cost in product margins or lost design wins. If it came to it, selling them foundry services would probably be preferred to letting them die.

    1. Re:Actually...about Intel... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      it wouldn't surprise me if someone at Intel Legal has written up an "AMD/Foundry Contract Opinion.doc" and squirreled it away somewhere.

      Or they can take advantage of the situation to acquire nVidia's market position in GPU computing and patent arsenal (to annihilate the trolls - probably not gunning for AMD). Intel wants a viable AMD, to keep DoJ off its back. nVidia is just a market competitor with a manufacturing problem.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  6. No... by YuppieScum · · Score: 5, Informative

    NVidia has always been fabless, but AMD owned its own fabrication plants until a few years ago... when they were spun off into a separate company called Global Foundries.

    --
    This sig left unintentionally blank.
  7. Goodbye AMD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your shortsighted business practice of selling off your foundry has just killed you. It's gonna suck having Intel as the monopoly for the X86 CPU market.

    1. Re:Goodbye AMD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Your shortsighted business practices of getting fucked over by Intel's almost completely unpunished illegal monopoly abuse has just killed you.

      FTFY.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Goodbye AMD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      I am sad at not seeing AMD chips in MS Surface Pros and other toys, but that's not something that Intel illegally contrived at AMD's expense.

      When the A64 came out it stomped all over the P4. Despite Intel's fab advantage, te A64 was faster, cooler and cheaper than the P4.

      At that point, Intel outright bribed Dell and other large vendors to NOT use AMD chips. That is flat out illegal and denied AMD a huge amount of revenue when they most needed it to capitalise on their advantage with intel.

      So despite having a big advantage in superior tech, Intel used illegal tactics to starve AMD of cash for as long as it took for intel to catch up.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  8. no way??? by sribe · · Score: 2

    The only other manufacturer with 14nm capacity is Intel and there's no way Intel will sell them some capacity.

    Riiiight. Because Intel never ever sells fab capacity.

    Oh wait, they started doing that in 2010. Oops.

    1. Re:no way??? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Riiiight. Because Intel never ever sells fab capacity.

      AMD going to Intel for fab capacity is like the Palestinians going to the Israelis for rocket technology.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. Re:Production by slew · · Score: 2

    Interesting that they both use the same supplier for their critical component and are competing products....I'm guessing neither have enough money to build their own production labs like Apple did with that special glass they use.

    Apple didn't spend their own money on production of their "special" glass (it is purchased gorilla glass 4 from Dow Corning)...
    On that whole GT advanced technologies sapphilre disaster, they attempted to purchase their own production labs (and lease them back to GT for production), but apparently that ain't gonna happen now...

    Imagine how amazing they would be as a joint company.

    Actually Nvidia, Apple, AMD, Qualcomm and Xilinx are major customers of TSMC's advanced processes and all are subject to the whims of the supply and demand for wafers at TSMC. It's just that Apple is a bigger and newer customer and generally customers in that position get preferential treatment to win their business. FWIW, at a capital cost of about $2B, I don't think Nvidia and AMD are going to get back into the fab biz any time soon. Then their is the whole poly silicon suppliers and wafer suppliers and Applied Materials steppers, etc, etc... Companies are all highly independent on specialized suppliers. This is not unsual in this business (or any other modern enterprise). Very few companies are totally vertically integrated these days...

  10. Re:Build your own fab by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    Fab facilities are tremendously expensive. This isn't something you can throw together in your basement. A fab is going to cost at least a billion dollars - and that's not even for state-of-the-art 14nm stuff. TMSC's fab cost ten billion dollars to build. That's just the construction cost - semiconductor tech is constantly changing, so if you want to make the latest goodies like high-performance GPUs there's also the need to constantly puchase new and better equipment.

  11. Re:Build your own fab by confused+one · · Score: 2

    AMD had fabs. They had several. The cost of operating them was a heavy burden on their bottom line; so, they spun them off in 2009 (that would be Global Foundries) and decided to go fabless. Now, they're experiencing the consequence of being dependent on 3rd parties to do their manufacturing for them. TSMC is building more fab capacity -- they just can't get it online fast enough (it takes several years to build and qualify one of these fabs)

  12. Nokia the ultimate outsourcing warning by jphamlore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ultimate story about the dangers of outsourcing is how Nokia destroyed its mobile phone business. Once upon a time Nokia and Texas Instruments had a very close working arrangement with TI being Nokia's fab partner. The two together had a complete phone solution. So how does Nokia treat TI in the mid 2000s: They decided to diversify their wireless chipset providers away from working with TI. Only Nokia forgot one thing: TI don't play in markets where it cannot be overall #1. TI will as fast as possible get out of business segments where it cannot lead. And so TI said to Nokia, bye by 2012. In 2009. By then Nokia had decided it wanted to get its ARM SoCs and wireless modems from the same supplier, and there was one natural candidate, especially since they were, and still are, the leaders in LTE: Qualcomm. Only there was one big problem: Nokia had been caught in a patent war with Qualcomm for years trying to put Qualcomm out of business. It was Nokia that wound up having to settle for billions of US dollars, and suddenly it was at the mercy of the company to whom it had been an existential threat. Oops.

  13. Re:Shrinking your competitor's capacity by ArhcAngel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually oil companies have been exporting crude products abroad (They still can't legally export unrefined crude oil) for a few years now because they can make more selling them in other countries. In fact this past June some restrictions were lifted and they started exporting unrefined ultralight oil

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  14. Re:Build your own fab by hendrips · · Score: 4, Informative

    As of September 2014:

    -AMD's available cash: $950 million
    -AMD's market capitalization: $2.6 billion
    -AMD's credit rating: Absolute garbage
    -Cost of a new Intel/TSMC style fab: $7 billion - $10 billion

    It's a nice thought, but the reason that so many companies, including huge companies like Apple, IBM, and Qualcomm, have gone fabless is that fabs are astonishingly, mind-blowingly, expensive.

  15. Former Semiconductor Furnace Engineer Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you want the biggest bang for your buck, a single 12" Vertical Semiconductor furnace shipped and installed - $900K - $1m USD (low end guess). I've been to Taiwan into another fab, UMC, and they have hundreds of these furnaces. But with wafers that big, you need an automated transfer system (because you can't trust people to carry $10,000 worth of substrate) Wafer boats, typically holding 13 wafers, are $2000-$3000 each. the substrate itself is incredibly expensive. And not to mention the electrical bills...running one of these furnaces requires heating a 12" Diameter tube to up to 1200C....usually 480 volts into them. With the Silicon Carbide process tubes needing to be replaced every 3-4 months, and the heating elements getting an average 1 year lifespan, that's a LOT of money.

    I don't blame them for not wanting to open their own fabs!

  16. Re:Intel use their old 20nm fabs for their own GPU by blackomegax · · Score: 2

    Intel has such a shit reputation with the GPU/gamer crowd that they'd profit more by leasing those fabs to AMD/Nvidia (strictly on GPU production, i doubt they'd allow AMD to make CPU's on it), whom can actually market and sell GPU's.