R520 tape-out number three was successful

IT TOOK ATI three tape-outs of R520 silicon to make it right but it turned out to be third time lucky.

The first R520 silicon worked at high speeds but only few chips worked, we hear. Wafers are expensive and each costs roughly $3000 and if only 20 chips work from your wafer that will make a production costs of that chip enormously big. You need a better number to make more money. We heard those numbers a while back and we believe that this is how much Nvidia or ATI has to pay for each wafer.

We wrote about this here and we have to remind you that Jen Hsun of Nvidia told the world that Geforce series, at least one of them, cost Nvidia $400 million to develop. That is serious money but for that money you will get all chips from mobile to desktop and workstation but than again its not that easy to earn $400 million and to make a profit on top, knowing that average sales price of one chip is $27, if I remember correctly.

The same business model can be applied to ATI, as both companies are manufacturing its chips at the same TSMC fab.

We already said that R520 is to work at more than 600MHz but we believe this number is going to go even higher.

We strongly believe that ATI doesn't have any other choice than to go for a hard launch and, if that happens, you won't see any Fudo R520s before September. This will give Nvidia a pure lead of two and a half months before ATI reshapes and releases its new cards.

Don't forget that Nvidia has a G70 Ultra up its sleeve, but this is still to come.

Take a moment and look what we said back in May here I believe we revealed this ATI cunning plan quite some time ago. The battle is about to get heated, but not before summer cools, we fear. µ