Hm, it’s been a while since we talked last about the launching schedule of the new NVIDIA chips. To be more exact, two weeks have passed since then (see this news story). But it couldn’t last forever, so new rumors didn’t keep us waiting for long :-)
So, according to the latest rumors, the launching date for the new chips will be a bit postponed: NV17 (and its mobile solution has been already announced) will be released in January 2002 (and not in December as we have expected), and the next high-performance solution aka Nv25 will come out even later. More exact schedule is still unknown, though we sincerely hope that it will happen within Q1 2002.
We believe that this delay is connected with NVIDIA’s uncertainty about the distribution of orders between TSMC and UMC as well as with the overloaded 0.15micron production lines by TSMC. Moreover, NVIDIA must be thinking over the possibility to take advantage of TSMC’s 0.13micron production lines one day. At present these capacities are almost unattainable for NVIDIA. Yes, TSMC can produce a trial chips supply for NVIDIA, but not more. First of all, these capacities are involved into C3 (Ezra) manufacturing, and secondly, they are still too small for large-scale mass production. Anyway, UMC can’t boast anything like that yet :-)