AMD Latest Updates; Secret Materials Stolen, RX Vega To Have Limited Production Due To Low HBM2 Supplies

AMD has been facing some major hurdles prior to its next graphics card release. Some of the secret designs and materials have been stolen by a former engineer of TSMC who wanted to sell them to a rival Chinese company. There is also a shortage of HBM2 supplies which is making things difficult for AMD to fulfill the market demands of its upcoming Radeon RX Vega.

According to Digi Times, a former employee of TSMC named Hsu had stolen some of the secret designs and technical materials of AMD and intended to sell them to a rival Chinese company. But he was arrested by the police in Mainland China before he could smuggle the valuables.

 TSMC is one of the biggest processor makers of the world right now; having Intel and Samsung among its clients the company is also developing the AMD's 28nm gaming console. The stolen materials were related to TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process that is being used to develop the AMD's 28nm gaming console as well as graphics chips like the HD 7000, R 300 and R 200.

According to Wccftech, meanwhile, the production of AMD's Radeon RX Vega has been marred by the limited supplies of HBM2. Reports suggest that AMD will not be able to produce more than 20,000 units of RX Vega for its launch in the second quarter of 2017. In fact, the company is expected to produce only 16,000 units of RX Vega during the first few months of the launch. This is expected to be much lower than the market demand for the initial stage.

AMD is currently out of options to provide any real threat to NVIDIA's Pascal based GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti and Titan Xp cards. AMD is yet to produce any kind of high-end graphics card since its last big release of Radeon R9 Fury X back in 2015. The complete dominance from NVIDIA means many consumers have opted for the GeForce series while the ones waiting for AMD's RX Vega could be left disappointed due to limited supply.