No 65 nanometre graphics likely this year

TSMC is getting ready for its 65 nanometre but only for less complex chips. It cannot make a few hundred million chips GPUs yet. We think that Nvidia's next generation G80 will be at a 90 nanometre process and ATI's upcoming R600 at 80 nanometres.

Both companies would like to go to 65 nanometre, but it is not that easy as you might imagine. It is not a simple optical shrink it is the real thing and the firms will have to redesign the gates to fit the smaller design.

You won't be seeing 65 nanometre graphics before 2007 and it probably won't be that early in the year either. µ