Tsmc???

[Fluff]

Just wondering but it seems that alot of the graphics manufactures have TSMC to fabricate their chips. Nvidia, matrox ( i believe). ATI, 3d labs?? I wonder who gets first pick with who gets the latest fab (.15 etc) technology.

Could all this delay from announcement be because they dont want a shortage of chips and Matrox cannot get the quantity they want on time?

[superfly]

That's always a possibility...


Every company is fighting to get their 0.13 micron chips as fast as possible,but currently they're isn't enough 0.13 micron production capability for everyone so companies like TSMC,are serving their biggest customers first,namely VIA,over and above any graphics chips makers right now,at least in high enough volume....

[Wombat]

When you're looking for a fab, technology available tends to be the first consideration. You can't design a LSI chip until you know what technology its going to be in, and porting a design from one fab process to another is time consuming and costly. So, generally speaking, you can't design a chip and then shop around for a fab. A lot of fabs aren't running at capacity these days, so line time isn't the first consideration.

[Cobos]

LSI ? huh, what is that ?

Cobos

[Greebe]

Large Scale Integration

[superfly]

Of course,as with any given company,it's always a calculated risk once you desing any given chip,only having to wait for the fab process itself to become available in high enough volume and with good yeilds as well....


That might be the final hurdle for matrox and parhelia....

[Wombat]

Of course,as with any given company,it's always a calculated risk once you desing any given chip,only having to wait for the fab process itself to become available in high enough volume and with good yeilds as well....


That might be the final hurdle for matrox and parhelia....

That's what contracts are for.

[superfly]

Contracts....


I'm pretty sure that matrox was/is in constant comunication with the company who''ll ultimately be producing the chips themselves and only desingned the parhelia at a given fab process,most likely 0.13 micron,given the transistor budget used in the chip(according to rumors...),once they're fairly sure the fab can produce them with good yeilds and at a high enough volume....


But that still doesn't mean that delays with the fab process aren't possible either,even at this late a stage in the chip's developement....it's something that's happened before and likely will happen again,though hopefully not with parhelia....

[Fluff]

I don't think it's financially/ technologically feasible. BUT how about renting a video card off Matrox that used a large FPGA (field programmable gate array) for extra features. Which could be re-programmed when ever a new graphical feature was required. kind of like the old math co-processors for 386sx's but better.

AFAIK they use this tech when testing chip designs ( well at my uni) at very low clock rates.

[Wombat]

The problem with FPGAs is that silicon always outpaces them. FPGAs have been getting faster, but anything that runs around 200MHz or so is a pretty expensive. Also, FPGAs have a lower functionality/area ratio since they will have unused gates scattered about.

Like you said, good for testing out some designs, but not good enough for a key video part.

[ALBPM]

Actually most new graphics and other types of controller components are going to be ASIC designs (Application-Specific-Integrated-Circuits).

Here's a good read on ASICs.....

http://www-ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~msmith/ASICs/HTML/ASICs.htm

http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/asics/

Here's a chart on comparative costs for various designs. Not really up to date but still a good comparison.



And here is a basic design flow for ASIC components.



Paul

[Nappe1]

I think Matrox either jump on UMC lines or continue co-operation with NEC as they do with G400 chips. I don't think we see MAtrox chip coming from TMSC...

but that's the plain guess...

[Kruzin]

I would geuss it's none of the above

[Nappe1]

Kruzin: what an interesting guess...

[DukeP]

Yeah Kruzin. I thought the heatsink was way harder to pry off than that!
;P

~~DukeP~~