10/13/2011 11:54:00 PM
dannzfay
AMD seems to have troubles with the availability of its A-Series APUs based on the Llano architecture as some of these 32nm chips are hard to find in stock at most online or brick and mortar retailers leading us to believe that Globalfoundries' 32nm fabrication issues are to blame.
The chips that are hardest to come by are the A6-3600 and A8-3800, since Fudzilla reports these aren't available in stores across Europe.
The situation is similar in the US, where the A6-3600 and A8-3800 aren't listed by any of the major retailers, although the rest of the Llano APUs in AMD's A-Series lineup are easy to find.
Compared to the rest of the Llano chips released by AMD, the A6-3600 and A8-3800 are a bit special since both parts feature quad processing cores, Turbo Core support and have a TDP of just 65W.
The low TDP of the APUs could be an explanation for their low availability, as such parts are usually required to go through a much more strict binning process, which puts a lot of pressure on Globalfoundries ability to mass produce 32nm chips.
We first heard about AMD's troubles with the foundry at the end of September when Thomas Seifert, CFO and former interim CEO of AMD, said the outfit he makes part of is disappointed with the 32nm production performance achieved by Globalfoundries.
Since then, we have seen AMD having to adjust its projections for Q3 revenue in order to make up for the poor yields achieved in the production of the Llano APUs.
These yield issues also led AMD to revise its chip fabrication deal with Globalfoundries in April of this year.
The new deal allowed the Sunnyvale-based company to pay only for the working 32nm chips the foundry produced, compared to the previous contract that required it to pay for every wafer manufactured (no matter the percent of non-working chips).
The troubles faced by Globalfoundries have also affected its 45nm production node, as both fabrication processes use a series of common tools.
