The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is punching out 0.15 micron Nvidia GeForce 3 graphics chips in "full production" quantities.

There's much mutual back-slapping in TSMC's news release, but 'aren't we great' statements aside, the announcement does mean that Nvidia's motherboard and PC OEM partners will be able to start increasing the volumes of GeForce 3-based parts they ship. More to the point, prices should start to fall.

The ramp-up also covers the chips Nvidia has developed for Microsoft's Xbox - the Xbox GPU and the Media Communications Processor - so the software developer's hardware manufacturer can start putting consoles together in plenty of time to build up volumes for its autumn launch. ®