NVIDIA/ATI: 55nm pilot production now, avaibility in early 2008

Digitimes is reporting that pilot production for TSMC's 55nm process by NVIDIA and AMD's graphics division has started, and that actual products will likely be available in early 2008. It was previously rumoured that NVIDIA's MCP79 single-chip IGP for Intel platforms would be one of the first 55nm chips around, but it remains to be seen if that will actually be the case now.

TSMC claims that 55nm is a 10% linear shrink of 65nm, which implies that it has the same design rules as 55nm and that the theoretical maximum scaling is 19% (1.1² = 1.19). TSMC also reports that power consumption is also improved by 10 to 20%, so leakage seems to be under control. This could make it an attractive option for handhelds too, although these chips tend to skip half nodes.

Digitimes hints that NVIDIA will likely begin GPU production on 55nm before ATI, but that obviously remains to be seen. As always, design cycles and other factors also influence which company is first to a product node, and NVIDIA has previously been quite aggressive on nodes such as 110nm. In recent times, AMD has also been more aggressive though (RV610/RV630 are 65nm, while G84/G86 are 80nm), which makes it more difficult to predict who'll be there first this time around.