NEW YORK: AMD launched R9 Fury and Fury X GPUs earlier this month and it is already facing some supply issues. To be honest they are facing a lot of them. What seemed like a quick sold out situation is becoming a problem for the company.
All those who were rushing towards the market to get world’s first Fiji GPUs with advanced HBM technology were turned away. The cards went out of stock quickly so now that the Fiji GPU manufacturing company is turning almost all of its sources towards Through Silicon Vias (TSV).
To the best of our knowledge, in order to connect the HBM DRAM stack to the GPU die, AMD uses silicon interposer. Usually what happens is this extra step of combining all three parts together using the Through Silicon Vias (TSV) is not required. However, AMD prefers to perform this step as well.
We all believed that the company would collaborate either with Hynix or TSMC. Although in this case they preferred to stick with a company already producing silicon interpose. Usually in a ‘shortage of product’ situation, a third-party manufacturer is contacted to handle the situation.
The company is in agreement with United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) that produces the same kind of Silicon interposer required to combine HBM and GPU die. Reportedly the silicon interposer is developing in massive volumes.
Although the dies are almost in production but it may still take some time for the manufactured product to reach market shelves. Unfortunately AMD could not meet with the demand for R9 Fury and Fury X GPUs but hopefully the company won’t do the same mistake once R9 Fury Nano is launched.
