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AMD Southern Islands to Arrive in September, Says Rumour

After quite a bit of time stuck with 40nm fabrication process, the rumor states that AMD is preparing to launch the first graphicscore based on the code, the 28nm node named South Islands, in the third quarter of this year.

There is no firm release date was set, but believe SemiAccurateSunnyvale-based company plans to launch the first GPU is basedon this architecture in September this year.

Their assumption is based on the fact that TSMC has confirmedthat they will begin to release 28nm parts in Q3 2011, which meansthat by September AMD can have the volume needed to formallylaunch the first graphics card based on this core.

According to the same, the only obstacles that sit in front of thelaunch of AMD's architecture from the Southern Islands TSMC is the ability to mass produce 28nm chips.

The future of the South Islands AMD graphics processing unit thatis built using the 28nm manufacturing node and is based on thearrangements introduced by the same VLIW4 Cayman architecture(AMD HD 6900-series).

However, it will receive some minor tweaks intended to improvethe performance and energy efficiency of the cores.

Combined with an increase in the number of shader processorsand improved operating frequency (both advances enabled by thenew fabrication process), on the Radeon HD 7000 line should beable to provide the same performance as that now offered by the dual-GPU solution.

The first Radeon HD 7000-series GPU will be manufactured byTSMC, but Globalfoundries also expected to join the action later down the line, provided that everything goes well with their 28nmfabrication technology.

Earlier this month, AMD officially confirmed that the company will release a new series graphics core by the end of this year.