We believe that this settles the score, HD 7000 is the official designation for Southern Islands, AMD’s 28nm next generation graphics. The current schedule still indicates a launch in later part of September, just before the end of the quarter, to make the investors a bit happier. This should take place a year after the Northern Island Radeon HD 6000 launch.
So the Radeon HD 7000 series moniker looks legitimate, and we do have a picture to back it up. It is now certain that AMD comes first with its 28nm chips, before Nvidia's Kepler that has reportedly been pushed back for early 2012. It was interesting that despite close partnership with Globalfoundries and the fact that they have 28nm, it still decided to manufacture its chip at TSMC, as TSMC has much more experience with highly complex graphics chips.
AMD simply didn’t have money or the practical need to support two different 28nm chip designs, one for TSMC and one for Globalfoundries.