Isso é uma promessa do caraças. Já fazem bastantes anos desde que alguém conseguia bater-se com a Intel nos processos de fabrico.
Veremos se a TSMC consegue cumprir.
Printable View
Isso é uma promessa do caraças. Já fazem bastantes anos desde que alguém conseguia bater-se com a Intel nos processos de fabrico.
Veremos se a TSMC consegue cumprir.
Bom para a AMD...
Acho que eles estão a contar que exista algum contratempo com a Intel na redução de processos de fabrico abaixo dos 10nm e com isso aproximarem-se... caso contrário não me parece que eles se aproximem.Citação:
Post Original de Horus-Anhur
TSMC pulls off EUV on 1000 wafersNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...555e7a93_L.jpg
Exposes itself
Chipmaking gear maker ASML has told the world that that its customer TSMC has exposed more than 1000 wafers on an NXE:3300B EUV system in a single day.
This is an important move towards using EUV lithography in volume production of semiconductors. So far the technology, which has proved promising, has not managed to be used in commercial processes. Anthony Yen, R&D director at TSMC, told the 2015 SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium that during a recent test run on an NXE:3300B EUV system more than 1022 wafers were exposed in 24 hours with sustained power of over 90 Watts.
“We are pleased with this result, as it shows us the potential of the system.”
The NXE:3300B system is one of two such systems currently at TSMC, and will be joined by two additional to-be-shipped new NXE:3350B systems. TSMC has stated that it intends to use EUV in production, the company stated.
Hans Meiling, vice president of service and product marketing EUV at ASML said the test run at TSMC demonstrates the capability of the NXE:3300B scanner, and moves closer to the target of sustained output of 1000 wafers per day by 2015.”
“We must continue to increase source power, improve system availability and show this result at multiple customers over multiple days,” he added.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...on-1000-wafers
Samsung Exynos 7420 14nm, a closer lookNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...0d6f002b_L.jpg
64-bit, big.LITTLE Cortex-A57 at 2.1GGHz, A53 at 1.5GHz
Samsung had a rather short press conference, not talking that much about what is inside its new flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones, at least not in terms of silicon.
When we realized that Exynos 7420 is manufactured in FinFET 14nm technology and that the most popular Android phone doesn’t need Qualcomm anymore, we said this would be a pivotal moment for Samsung and the industry in general.
14nm delivers substantial gains
On February 14, Samsung announced that its new 14nm Exynos 7 Octa processor entered a volume production. When compared to Samsung’s planar 20nm technology, this new process enables up to 20 percent higher performance, 35 percent lower power consumption and an overall productivity gain of 30 percent. Bear in mind that the Galaxy S5 has a 28nm Snapdragon 801, not a 20nm Exynos, and that the performance and efficiency gap should be even wider.
T-Mobile Austria was one of the few places helped us find out a bit more about the processor. There were no big surprises. The site lists it as Exynos 7420 (14nm) (64-bit, A57 2.1G Quad + A53 1.5G Quad). In a sense the basic specification and the choice of cores puts this CPU very close to the Snapdragon 810 processor, but it's a different story in the GPU and modem department.
The Snapdragon 810 also supports native 64-bit and has four Cortex-A57 cores at 2.0GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz, but it is a planar 20nm chip. This means that head-to-head the Exynos 7420 should end up faster, while at the same time delivering superior battery life. We have to wait for some real-world tests to see the efficiency gains in action, but initial benchmarks look very promising indeed. Another thing to consider is throttling. The Snapdragon 810 suffers from aggressive throttling on the LG Flex 2, but thanks to the more advanced process, the Exynos should cope with extended load somewhat better. While the official max clock is just 100MHz on the Exynos, the processor should be able to sustain it for much longer periods of time.
Exynos 7420 and in-house Cat 6 modem
Perhaps the most surprising part of the new platform is the modem. Samsung hasn’t gone on record about the modem, but according Sammobile it should be using model SS333, or Exynos Modem 333, an in-house modem. Samsung only tells the press that it is using a Cat. 6 LTE modem.
This modem can achieve speeds of 300Mbits, making it more than capable of offering a great internet experience. Cat 6 enables the Galaxy S6 to connect to two spectrums at once, aggregating both to give faster download speeds. The iPhone 6 supports LTE Category 4, offering up to 150Mbps downlink data rates and 50Mbps uplink speeds.
Qualcomm has an LTE Cat.10 capable modem to offer up to 450 Mbps downlink via 3x carrier aggregation and up to 100Mbps uplink using 2x aggregation, but most carriers simply don’t have the infrastructure to support it, at least not yet.
There is no doubt that from the hardware perspective the Galaxy S6 has the most advanced processor in the market, leaning heavily on using the world's first mobile 14nm SoC and reaping many advantages of this new process, while Qualcomm and the rest of the competition just started 20nm manufacturing and sales. That said, 2015 will be interesting year to watch in the mobile space, as FinFET becomes an option for high end SoCs and 28nm becomes even cheaper, allowing manufacturers to use more powerful chips in entry level devices.
As for 20nm, it will still be around, but with limited capacity and higher costs than 28nm, it does not have much of a future.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/mobile/...nm-closer-look
The fact that Samsung 14nm SoC works surprised the industryNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...ec2efaaf_L.jpg
No one expected such good yields
We found out one rather interesting story at the Mobile World Congress and it sheds more light on Samsung's decision to use Exynos SoCs for most markets instead of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810.
It turns out that the Exynos 7240 was manufactured in 14nm and that going with octa-core with four Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 was an incredibly huge risk. Samsung had a nice run with 20nm parts for the Galaxy Note 4 that used an in-house Exynos 5433 SoC in many markets. This was the world's first Android based 20nm SoC that used Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores. Samsung used 20nm Exynos 5433 for some markets, while most other markets like the US were covered by the Snapdragon 805 with a Cat 6 LTE modem.
We also learned that Snapdragon 810 will also ship in some Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones because of its modem technology advantage over Samsung's Exynos. It all depends on the market.
Many industry figures expected that Samsung would announce two versions of the Galaxy S6, one with Exynos for a few small markets, and the other version for most of the world with Snapdragon 810.
What happened is that 14nm yields for Exynos 7240 were significantly better than Samsung or anyone else in the industry expected. This includes Qualcomm, Intel, TSMC - you name it - and people still cannot believe that Samsung recovered so well from disastrous 20nm yields in its fabs. This is the reason why Samsung decided that most of its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge should ship with Exynos and a smaller number with Snapdragon 810 SoCs.
The 14nm Exynos 7240 uses Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores and delivers a slight increase in speed that got up from 1.9GHz with Exynos 5433 to 2.1GHz for A57 cores and from 1.3GHz to 1.5GHz on A53 cores. At the same time 14nm means that Samsung needs less power to run the chip, while reaping more performance.
So despite the fact that Samsung is a huge and important player, they were essentially lucky with Exynos 7240 its good yields on 14nm. Qualcomm is working hard to release Snapdragon 820 and challenge Samsung's new chip. The fact that Samsung relies on the plain Cortex design from ARM will probably cost it leadership in the near future, as in 2015 some of the big boys have custom, in-house CPU cores.
We remembered that Nvidia's Jen-Hsung Huang said that the company could not get into Apple or Samsung and that they could only play in other market niches, and guess what - he was right about that. Bottom line - Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia do custom cores, while Samsung, Hisilicon and MediaTek still rely on reference ARM cores.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...d-the-industry
Parece que a GF está a ter sucesso com o processo a 14nmn.
Most Of Apple's A9/A9X Chips To Be Manufactured On TSMC's 16nm FinFET ProcessNoticia:Citação:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/J/L/450...logo_w_600.jpgOver the past few years, Apple has tried to distance itself from using Samsung as a supplier, which makes sense considering that Samsung was also Apple's main competitor in the mobile market. Apple didn't want Samsung to gain any advantages it might not get otherwise if the company wasn't its supplier.
Apple managed to manufacture 100 percent of its chips on TSMC's processes as recently as last year. However, earlier this year, there were some rumors that Apple may go back to Samsung and its 14nm FinFET process, which is ahead of TSMC's 16nm FinFET process both in terms of performance and time to market speed.
The Exynos 7420 chip inside the Galaxy S6 is already built on Samsung's 14nm process, while no TSMC 16nm chip is expected to come out until Q4 this year. That wouldn't be a major issue for Apple, though, as that's when the company plans to release its new iPhones and iPads anyway.
New reports say that Apple will continue to manufacture the bulk of its A9 and A9X chips at TSMC's foundries. As many as 70 percent of the chips are expected to be built on TSMC's 16nm process, with the A9X (the iPad chip) to be built exclusively on TSMC's process.
"We believe TSMC will earn most of the A9 orders thanks to its superior yield ramp and manufacturing excellence in mass-production. We expect TSMC to earn all of Apple's A9X orders (for the next generation iPad) and most of the A9 (for the next generation of iPhone), aggregating to an allocation of over 70%," said analysts from Daiwa Securities.Even if TSMC's process has slightly lower performance than Samsung's 14nm process, that shouldn't be much of an issue inside the much larger iPads, compared to the smaller space inside the iPhones. However, considering the new report said that up to 70 percent of the chips will be built on 16nm, it's possible that Apple may build the A9 chip that goes inside the iPhone 6S Plus, as well. The iPad market is shrinking, and it was never that large compared to the iPhone market, so at least some of the iPhone chips will have to be built on 16nm in order to reach that high percentage.
Apple doesn't like to rely much on Samsung as a supplier anymore, which is probably why the company intends to use TSMC whenever possible, but this time there may have been a yield issue as well. This was the first time Samsung opted to use Exynos chips exclusively in its high-end flagship and its most popular device, which is already seeing great demand, so there may not have been too much room left on its foundries for Apple's chips.
Apple is also expected to sell many new next-generation iPhones this fall, and it's possible Samsung couldn't cover the manufacturing for both flagship devices in such a short period of time.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/app...fet,28748.html
SEC filing says Samsung is fabbing chips for NvidiaNoticia:Citação:
Last month, Meritz Securities analyst Park Yu-ak claimed that Samsung would be manufacturing chips for Nvidia. He didn't provide any evidence to support that claim, but some has now surfaced in an official filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The annual report for Nvidia's 2014 fiscal year contains the following statement about chip manufacturing:
We do not manufacture the silicon wafers used for our GPUs and Tegra processors and do not own or operate a wafer fabrication facility. Instead, we are dependent on industry-leading foundries, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., to manufacture our semiconductor wafers using their fabrication equipment and techniques.The statement seems definitive, though it doesn't detail which Nvidia chips come from Samsung's fabs or what process is used to manufacture them. Previous reports suggested Samsung would produce application processors, like Nvidia's Tegra SoC, using its 14-nm process. Those stories also claimed that AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm would have chips fabbed on the same node.
The Tegra X1 SoC revealed at CES is built on a 20-nm process, and we haven't heard anything about that chip receiving the 14-nm treatment. The finer process could be used for a Denver-based variant of the X1 or something else entirely. Thanks to TR regular SH SOTN for the tip.
http://techreport.com/news/28017/sec...ips-for-nvidia
Olha mais concorrência para a TSMC, Samsung e GF.
Nvidia could outsource production of GPUs to Intel – analyst
Boas!Citação:
Post Original de Winjer
O que a Nvidia faz para não dar a ganhar á AMD indirectamente não fazendo outsourcing para a GF...
Cumprimentos,
LPC
É normal, se a AMD é um concorrente da nVidia, não fazia sentido a nVidia dar-lhe lucro ou trabalho, isto quando já se viu que a nvidia tem um rumo defenido e que é bem diferente daquele que a AMD está a ter neste momento.
Agora o que não deixa de ser interessante, é que a Intel já considerou a nVidia um rival e agora aceita produzir GPUS para a nVidia, vamos a ver o que isto vai dar e as consequencias daqui resultantes para a concorrencia.
Nvidia reportedly spreading orders between TSMC and SamsungNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...a61ac9f8_L.jpg
And may give some foundry business to Intel come 2017
Chipmaker Nvidia has reportedly moved some of its orders from its long-time partner TSMC to Samsung.
It does not end there, as RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman argues that Nvidia could also resort to using Intel as a foundry, according to Barrons. In a recent note, Freedman wrote:
“Based on conversations with management at Nvidia’s Analyst Day as well as Nvidia’s recent 10-K, we believe Nvidia now uses Samsung as a foundry supplier in addition to TSMC. We also believe there is a potential for Nvidia to use Intel as a foundry. While we continue to believe that TSMC has the majority of Nvidia’s wafers for CY2015 and probably CY2016 as well.”Freedman also argued that Nvidia could lose some Intel royalty payments in 2017, which could explain why Nvidia would try using Intel as a foundry. A potential decision to distance itself from TSMC would present an opportunity for alternative foundries such as Intel and Samsung, argued Freedman.
“Nvidia would be opening up a $1.7 billion foundry revenue stream to suppliers from whom they are seeking royalty revenues,” wrote Freedman. “Nvidia could be set up in a powerful position as they could dangle the $1.7 billion foundry “carrot on a stick” to increase the likelihood of collecting future royalty revenue streams from Samsung and/or Intel.”
However, for the time being Nvidia remains committed to TSMC and will in all likelihood use the Taiwanese foundry’s 16FF and 16FF+ nodes for future products over the next two years, potentially a bit longer, as production would have to be phased out gradually and Nvidia would likely have to keep building parts on legacy nodes until all are phased out.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/37357-n...mc-and-samsung
Penso que isto se deverá aos problemas que a TSMC estará a ter com os seus volumes de produção e problemas em avançar para os novos processos de fabrico.
Qualcomm and MediaTek reportedly shifting orders from TSMCNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...6382e0f9_L.jpg
Looking for cheaper 28nm alternatives?
Qualcomm and MediaTek are reportedly shifting some of their orders from TSMC, in search of better pricing.
According to Digitimes, the mobile chipmakers are looking for cheaper alternatives. The list of potential candidates is not too long – basically the companies could choose UMC, SMIC or Globalfoundries.
These three foundries are said to have obtained more 28nm orders as of Q1 2015.
Lower costs or lessening dependence on TSMC?
In addition to looking for better value, the world’s two biggest smartphone SoC makers are also said to be trying to lessen their dependence on TSMC, which dominated the 28nm SoC landscape for years. Both companies are also said to have suffered from “tight supply” of 28nm silicon from TSMC.
TSMC is currently churning out smartphone SoCs on three nodes – 28nm, 20nm and 16nm FinFET. However, aside from Apple and Qualcomm, which use the planar 20nm process for their latest flagship SoCs, and Huawei’s new Kirin 930 processor on 16nm, the vast majority of TSMC’s SoC business remains on 28nm.
The 20nm node is particularly interesting, because it was not widely adopted and in hindsight it looks like TSMC only went ahead with it for the sake of Qualcomm and Apple, which is what our sources hinted at last year.
28nm is still good enough for many outfits
While TSMC’s 20nm and 16nm nodes are attractive for some high-end SoC designs, they don’t make much sense in other market segments.
The bottom line is that an average FinFET SoC is bound to cost 2-2.5x more than a planar 28nm part. Prices of mid-range SoCs have tumbled by about 20% last year, so every penny counts – literally.
This is particularly true of the immensely competitive Chinese market. Most Chinese smartphones ship with 28nm parts, and most of these are low- to mid-end SoCs with four or eight Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A53 cores.
Shifting these products to any new node in 2015 simply does not make much financial sense, so Fudzilla expects 28nm to remain the node of choice for all cheap SoCs this year, and probably for the first couple of quarters of 2016.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...ders-from-tsmc
Interessamte esta noticia, anda tudo atrás de preços baixos.
TSMC faces weak smartphone chip demandNoticia:Citação:
http://www.fudzilla.com/media/k2/ite...04b1111b_L.jpg
Blame the almighty dollar
The share value of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is falling faster than a team of free fall parachuting elephants who have forgotten to pack the key ingredient of their act.
More than four analysts published reports saying a stronger US dollar may weaken smartphone chip demand.
Analysts at HSBC Holdings and Citigroup said that TSMC sales of chips might not be as strong as it had expected as demand and mobile device demand will soften.
MayBank Kim Eng Group and Credit Suisse also predicted the global chip foundry industry will miss TSMC's forecast for 12 percent growth.
US Dollar
"Based upon the strengthening of the US dollar against many other currencies, which creates weakening purchasing power, there is a chance we will have to adjust down that 12 percent rate," Elizabeth Sun, TSMC's head of investor relations, told Bloomberg News.
TSMC gave that foundry growth forecast at its January 15 investor conference, saying at the time "we are confident we can outperform the foundry revenue growth by several percentage points in 2015."
It should be doing well, if Apple and Qualcomm who it makes chips for also do well, however if they aren't then it is in trouble. HSBC said that while Apple must be brilliant, because it is Apple, TSMC was its dependant on a few customers, which could offset potential gains it makes from Jobs' Mob.
China smartphone unit growth is predicted to climb only 12 percent this year, from a previous 21 percent forecast. Meanwhile sharp declines in currencies against the US dollar will hurt demand in Western Europe and Latin America.
Citigroup cut its full-year global smartphone growth forecast to 15.5 percent from 19 percent.
Smartphone
That smartphone downgrade and Samsung's cunning plan to use its own chips, instead of those from Qualcomm, prompted Citigroup to downgrade the Taiwanese company for the first time since at least October 2011, according to a report published yesterday. It now rates the stock neutral.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...ne-chip-demand
Após vários anos com a TSMC a dominar, é curioso ver este domínio a ser desafiado por tantas empresas ao mesmo tempo.
Será que a TSMC vai ser a próxima foundrie a cair?