okay, I'm stupid

I'm pretty sure nvidia and ATI are graphics cards companies with some supercomputing stuff thrown in recently. Not sure about the other company, I'm guessing it's similar(correct me here).

So my question is, is their stuff easier to build than cpus? Because 40nm is a little over a processor generation away for Intel and for AMD it's about 2 generations away.

Am I missing something?

I've read that already 1000 times

CHIP FAB XXXX IS to delay its XX nm process, a bit. It was originally scheduled to start shipping this year, just barely, but now it has been pushed out.

People whispering in our ear have said the first parts, originally scheduled for the waning days of 19XX, slipped to January a bit ago. They then moved on to February/March, and that is looking much more solid now.

The first one out of the gate is usually Abcdefg, and the firm was hoping to ship XX nm parts this year, but that looks doubtful. The next big boy was Noprst. Its next-gen part was set to tape out in September according to its engineering roadmaps. Still, if Noprst is as timely as usual with tapeouts, the XX nm delay won't hurt them at all.

Next on the road to pain is Abcdefg. It was planning to have parts out weeks after Noprst, but that likely won't happen either, because of the slip. In the end, all three big players will be out with XX nm parts at about the same time, late Q1.

If you need an FGHIJK to connect your next gen Noprst part to your next gen Abcdefg part, there won't be any waiting before you get all the parts you need to make your boards. It will be a lively Q1

ATi?

Firstly "slipped to January a bit ago"

"a bit ago".... gotta love the inq for time frames of whispers.

Secondly, correct me if im wrong but aren't ATi planning to initally supply its partners with PCB and Chips for the 4870 X2 and their 40nm revisions from its own fabs? Of course supply will be next to nothing without TSMC but couldn't they still launch the chips before the founderies are equiped? It would make sence to me, just to get the upper hand over the green team by having it out first.

Too Fast of Shrinkage.

Shrinking has made XP much more stable as transistor count has expanded from few millions(Under 10 M) to todays 700 million behemoths. Yet something is still lacking or behind, its actual engineering design. this can best be seen in disparity between XP crowds Hopla & lack of Hardware for Vista ultimate. Obviously its poor idea to engineer Ultimate before all tricks of XP have been developed, So More Design Improvements More Often is solution, NOT Just mere Shrinkage at this Very Small time. Smaller is Better, Yet Better is Much Better if its internal design change, not just mere shrinkage.

Signed:Microbrained.

Altera, ATI

@Jason,

Altera is a maker of FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). They aren't any less dense than CPU designs, but the circuitry is much more regular (repeated patterns) than a CPU. It therefore lends itself to a more aggressive fab process, since it's easier to validate the design (detailed verification only has to be done on relatively small patches). You see that with DRAMs and Flash chips to a greater extent (there the repeated pattern is only a few transistors).

@Skeleton:

ATI does not have its own fab, AFAIK. Unless they started drawing on parent AMD's fabs, but I would have thought those were pretty well booked trying to crank out processors.