Items tagged with 7nm
On Thursday, Intel reported third-quarter financial results, which showed revenue up over expectations but down year-over-year. However, Intel also noted a rather significant dip in datacenter revenue, which spooked investors. This information was enough to kick Intel shares into a slump since the report came out, dropping the stock price approximately 11%. Bob Swan, Intel CEO, reported that Intel’s “teams delivered solid third-quarter results that exceeded our expectations despite pandemic-related impacts in significant portions of the business.” At present, Intel is predicting growth through the end of 2020 as its “remain(s) confident in our strategy." Its goal...
Read more...
TSMC is celebrating the production of 1 billion defect-free chips manufactured on its 7-nanometer technology, or put another way, 1 billion functional 7nm chips. If laid out on the ground, that would be enough to cover 13 Manhattan city blocks, the semiconductor fab says. It also equates to over 1 quintillion transistors. "A remarkable achievement for a technology that entered volume production in April 2018. Since then, we have manufactured 7nm chips for well over 100 products from dozens of customers...TSMC’s large-scale, efficient manufacturing means more than just producing a lot of chips quickly. It is critical to improving quality and reliability, and the learning enables technology...
Read more...
The latest fallout from Intel’s surprise announcement that it is delaying 7nm products came down this afternoon. The company sent word to press media that it is making changes to its executive team in an effort to “accelerate product leadership” as well as “improve focus and accountability in process technology execution”. The immediate impact of Intel’s executive shakeup is that Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, the company’s Chief Engineering Officer, is departing the company effective August 3rd. It’s a rather unceremonious exit for Renduchintala, who joined Intel in November 2015 as a high profile hire from Qualcomm. “I [want] to thank...
Read more...
Intel’s 7nm production delay has been well-documented over the past week, with the company explaining that the first products shipping using the process node won’t arrive until late 2022 or 2023 at the earliest. News of the pothole in the road for Intel sent its shares sliding, while AMD shares skyrocketed to new highs. During an investor call following its Q2 2020 earnings report, Intel did, however, comment that it was looking at contracting out work to third-party fabs when possible to help keep its roadmap somewhat intact. The most logical choice for Intel would be TSMC, which already produces chips for AMD, NVIDIA, Apple and many other high-profile players...
Read more...
Intel isn't having much luck in its endeavors with process nodes smaller than 14nm. The company's 10nm lines were famously delayed for years, which forced the company to rely on 14nm for its mainstream- and enterprise-class processors way longer than expected. The upcoming Rocket Lake-S family will hopefully be the last that we'll see of 14nm... at least on the consumer desktop side. Now today, Intel has given us more bad news with the announcement that its 7nm-based products have been delayed by another 6 months compared to the company's previously disclosed launch date. Intel explained in its Q2 earrings report: The company's 7nm-based CPU product timing is shifting approximately...
Read more...
We've been hearing about NVIDIA's next-generation Ampere for the past two years, but the company is finally ready to talk about its next-generation GPU architecture. Though you won't hear any info today about GeForce RTX 30 Series of consumer gaming graphics cards, NVIDIA is discussing details about Ampere for machine learning data center and HPC markets. In short, this version of Ampere is the biggest most powerful GPU NVIDIA has ever made, and the company offers that it's also the world's biggest 7nm chip. There's no doubt, it's massive. According to NVIDIA, its Ampere-based A100 GPU is already in full production and shipping to customers, and it is claiming that the A100...
Read more...
Intel has been refreshingly honest about its beleaguered progress with the 10nm process node, which was delayed many times, allowing AMD to gain an advantage with its 7nm Zen 2-based family of processors. With that being said, Intel does have 10nm Ice Lake processors currently making the rounds in the notebook segment, and its 10nm+ Tiger Lake processors are on track for release later this year. The company was even more frank today about the status of its 10nm process node at the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telcom conference this week. Intel CFO George Davis warned that 10nm is not going to be this big savior for the company’s chip operations. This is despite the fact that...
Read more...
TSMC has been critical to AMD’s resurgence as a dominant force in the processor market, and the company has also been beneficial in ensuring that Apple has a steady flow of A12 and A13 SoCs on hand for its hot-selling iPhone and iPad product lines. As TSMC is looking to grapple with the demands of these high-profile customers while shifting to smaller process nodes, it needs to invest in its fabs. Luckily for the company, its board this week approved approximately $6.7 billion to expand it facilities used to produce chips. The capital appropriations have been narrowed down to these five areas according to TSMC: Fab construction and installation of fab facility systems Installation...
Read more...
AMD introduced its first Navi 10-based GPUs over the summer starting with the Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT. While these are excellent mainstream GPUs based on 7nm process tech, they by no means offer flagship-caliber performance. However, if these latest rumors are accurate, AMD will have a true Radeon VII successor on its hands with the alleged Navi 21 GPU. Navi 21 will be based one second-generation RDNA architecture, and will take advantage of refined 7nm+ process tech. Based on comments posted to the Taiwanese forum PTT, Navi 21 will roughly be twice the size of Navi 10, coming at a 505mm2 versus 251mm2. To put in perspective how big this GPU is, the Radeon VII (Vega 20)...
Read more...
We've been hearing a lot about AMD's next-generation Renoir APUs in recent weeks, and it's likely that a release is just around the corner. Based on recent reports, it likely that AMD will announce these mobile and desktop processors at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. Today, we're getting the most detailed account of a Renoir APU to date with the "leak" of the Ryzen 7 4700U. Like all of the upcoming Renoir APUs, the Ryzen 7 4700U is based on AMD's 7nm Zen 2 architecture. As is often the case with AMD's APUs, the switchover to a newer architecture/process node (in this case, Zen 2) is coming months after it landed for the desktop Ryzen 3000 processors. The Ryzen 7 4700U was spotted in PCMark...
Read more...
Enthusiasts and enterprise customers have only been swimming in 7nm Zen 2 goodness for the past few months or so, but AMD is not sitting still when it comes to the rapid-fire development and release of its processors. Zen 3-based CPUs based on TSMC's 7nm+ process node are on track for launch likely during the second half of 2020. And now a new report today coming from China Times (hat tip to WCCFTech), says that TSMC is already progressing nicely with its next-generation 5nm process node. The company has three companies lined up with first production run: Apple, HiSilicon, and AMD. According to the report, TSMC is already seeing promising yields from 5nm (currently sitting...
Read more...
NVIDIA's latest generation Turing GPUs are built on a 12-nanometer manufacturing process, down from 16nm (TSMC) and 14nm (Samsung) parts cultivated for Pascal. Meanwhile, AMD is pumping out 7nm Navi GPUs. Wondering when NVIDIA might make the leap to 7nm as well? If a recent rumor is any indication, we could see graphics cards built around a 7nm Ampere GPU from NVIDIA next year. Manufacturing nodes are just one piece of the puzzle, though. As things currently stand, NVIDIA's latest GeForce cards are more capable than AMD's Radeon parts overall—NVIDIA's GeForce RTX series feature dedicated hardware for real-time ray tracing, and are generally faster at the top end in good old fashioned rasterized...
Read more...
It is only a matter of time before AMD launches a new round of accelerating processing units (APUs). Codenamed "Renoir," the company's next-generation APUs will replace its current-generation 12-nanometer Picasso lineup, and make the jump to a 7-nanometer Zen 2 foundation, possibly paired with Navi. While we sit back and wait for an official announcement, some supposed 3DMark 11 entries based on three Renoir APUs have popped up. Before we get to that, let's first talk a little about Renoir. Things can get confusing in a hurry when jumping around AMD's lineup, as generational nomenclatures get tossed around rather loosely. As it pertains to that, Zen 2 (7nm) CPU architecture is the third-generation...
Read more...
When it comes to 7nm chip production, TSMC has been on the bleeding edge of technological development. TSMC is the leading producer of 7nm designs for a number of leading tech giants like Qualcomm, AMD, and Apple (among others). While the company is well on its way to sampling 5nm parts to customers, it is also laying the groundwork for 3nm production in the near future. TSMC 3nm And 5nm Process Nodes The Electronic Times is reporting that TSMC has just begun construction on its next-generation 3nm fab. The manufacturing line is allegedly being constructed on 74 acres of land within the Southern Taiwan Science and Technology Park. TSMC reportedly has $19.5 billion at...
Read more...
There is reason to be optimistic AMD will deliver its next-generation Zen 3 processors on schedule. AMD's manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), says it has begun mass producing chips based on its 7-nanometer plus (7nm+) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. TSMC did not mention AMD by name, only that it is "delivering customer products to market in high volume." However, AMD has already confirmed its Zen 3 processors will be manufactured on a 7nm+ node, and said it August the design phase had been completed. At the time, AMD also stated the anticipated roll out of Zen 3 processors next year is "right on track." For TSMC, this 7nm+ node is its first...
Read more...
AMD's third-generation Ryzen 3000 processors based on 7nm Zen 2 architecture have been an absolute hit for the company. Not only are the processors providing significant boosts in single-threaded app performance, but the 7nm process tech allows the chips to run cooler than their Intel counterparts while ramping up the core counts to as high as 16 cores with the incoming Ryzen 9 3950X. However, now that Ryzen 3000 chips are in the hands of enthusiasts all over the world, there have been some concerns raised about max boost frequencies for the processors. Needless to say, AMD has been watching all of this activity in the enthusiast community very closely and it responded in...
Read more...
Timing is everything, and with that in mind, it is certainly no coincidence that Samsung has unveiled its new Exynos 9825 chipset just ahead of the launch of its upcoming Galaxy Note 10 device. The upgraded system-on-chip (SoC) will undoubtedly find its way into Samsung's latest flagship handset, bringing with it a performance bump. The Exynos 9825 is Samsung's first slice of silicon to be manufactured using its 7-nanometer extreme ultraviolet (EUV) low power plus (LPP) lithography. Without taking a deep dive into semiconductor design and production, utilizing EUV wavelengths allows for printing smaller circuits. Samsung announced in October of last year that it had begun mass producing EVU-based...
Read more...
AMD sparked quite a firestorm earlier this month when its latest May 2019 CPU roadmap removed references to the third-generation Ryzen Threadripper processors. The Ryzen Threadripper 3000 processors, however, did show up in an earlier March 2019 CPU roadmap update. Needless to say, speculation ramped up as to what was exactly going on with these HEDT processors. Was AMD delaying the processors to 2020, or would the company kill them off entirely to make way for cheaper, high-core consumer Ryzen processors? Luckily, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su was able to provide some insight into what's going on at a behind-the-scenes talk at Computex 2019. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su “I don’t think...
Read more...
When it comes to AMD's incoming crop of 7nm products, we have been bombarded with an abundance of riches with regards to credible Ryzen 3000 (Zen 2) leaks. However, the Radeon Navi leaks haven't been as forthcoming. Luckily, we've got some fresh info for you today courtesy of unreleased hardware sleuth TUM_APISAK. TUM_APISAK has uncovered two separate Radeon Navi engineering samples, one of which features the device ID 731F:C1. According to the readout given by 3DMark, the card sports a GPU clock of 1GHz and 8GB of memory clocked at 1.25GHz. If we assume GDDR6 memory, which is expected for Navi products, we're looking at an effective clock rate of 10GHz and total bandwidth of 320GB/sec....
Read more...
It's going to be an exciting 30 days or so for those that are firmly in the AMD camp with respect to gaming hardware. Later this month at Computex 2019, AMD is expected to launch its 7nm Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 family of processors. Today, AMD confirmed that it will be hosting a "Next Horizon Gaming" at E3 2019 next month. The event is scheduled to take place on June 10th at 6pm EST and will be live streamed for those that won't be in attendance at the show. AMD is being rather tight-lipped about the announcements that will be made during the event, but all signs are pointing towards us learning some significant details on the upcoming 7nm Navi architecture that will be...
Read more...
It looks as though AMD has made some adjustments to it processors lineup for 2019, and at least one expected produce family has gotten the boot. In March, AMD presented its 2019 product roadmap to investors in which it clearly showed that 3rd generation Ryzen 3000 desktop processors would arrive in mid-2019, while the 3rd generation Ryzen Threadripper processors would arrive sometime later in 2019. However, in its most recent roadmap issued to investors last week (and now available online in PDF form), the 3rdgeneration Ryzen Threadripper processors are a no-show. We can't say that this revelation is too terribly surprising for a number of reasons, as the 3rd generation...
Read more...
In just a few weeks, AMD is expected to roll out its new Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs based on its Zen 2 architecture. These new parts are being built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) on a 7-nanometer node. Looking ahead, however, TSMC is already talking about 6nm and even 5nm, the latter of which will bring improved logic density by 1.8X over 7nm, the company says. TSMC talked a little bit about its 5nm manufacturing process during a recent earnings call with investors. The company said its 5nm development is "well on track," having entered a phase called "risk production" in the first quarter. It expects a "tape out" in the first half of 2020. That is when designs by clients...
Read more...
