www.digitimes.com SPIL obtains packaging orders for AMD Vega 11 GPUs

[goldstone77]

SPIL obtains packaging orders for AMD Vega 11 GPUs
Julian Ho, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Friday 8 September 2017]

AMD will continue to contract Globalfoundries to manufacture its next-generation Vega GPUs, and will have Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) as its major packager for the chips, according to industry sources.


The supply of AMD's Vega 10 GPUs has fallen short of demand, thanks to robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI), Bitcoin mining and gaming applications since 2017, the sources said.


Globalfoundries uses its 14nm FinFET process technology to fabricate AMD's Vega 10-series GPUs, and is expected to land orders for the next-generation Vega 11 series, the sources indicated.


Packaging specialist SPIL, which has already obtained orders for AMD's Vega 10-series chips, will continue to hold the majority of backend orders for the Vega 11 series, the sources noted.


The popularity of AMD's and Nvidia's high-end GPUs for applications such as AI has drawn much attention to the importance of packaging technologies for 2.5D/3D solutions, the sources identified. Heterogeneous integration for use in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) devices also requires such advanced packaging techniques.


Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) with its CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) technology has reportedly secured orders for AI chips from Nvidia and Google. TSMC has further enhanced its advanced packaging capability eyeing a bigger presence in the supercomputer field, the sources said.


AMD's rumored Vega 20 series will be applied to supercomputers, according to the sources. AMD is likely to switch orders to TSMC, which will use its 7nm FinFET process and CoWoS packaging to fabricate the Vega 20-series GPUs, the sources noted.

 

[goldstone77]

It's just a rumor, but overall this is a good strategy to stay at a competitive node. I wonder how the wafer agreement comes into play with TSMC if this is true.

 

[Portland]

Another rumor is AMD has a product designed by freelancers that sometimes turns off and never turns back on.