And now we have an update on what happened to Swift, AMD’s 45nm Fusion that was cancelled some time ago.
This product was originally announced at AMD’s Analyst Day back in December 2007 and it was supposed to bring a single and dual core CPU cores and a GPU together. In 2009 Swift mysteriously disappeared from AMD’s roadmaps and the company decided to kill the project and start another one, something that would eventually result in Llano and Zacate / Ontario processors.
When Swift got back from the fabs, it simply didn’t work. It was a 45nm part and at this technology it just could not work. AMD did have a handful of working samples, but it was never close to any reasonable yields with this part.
Our industry friends are telling us that CPU cores didn’t work on some Swift samples, while in others the GPUs were non-functional. Most of the time it was either one or the other, CPU or GPU, so it samples with both functional cores were few and far between.
After this AMD had no choice than to cancel the project altogether and simply move to Llano, a 32nm version of AMD’s mobile Stars core coupled with a 32nm version of its graphics core for the high end Fusion part and 40nm TSMC made Bobcat powered Zacate and Ontario parts. With some luck, Ontario should ship early next year.
Catastrophic yields
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