Tag Archives: 16nm

TSMC suffered a major setback this week after it emerged that substandard chemicals were used in the production of 10,000 wafers. Chips being produced on the 12nm/16nm line were affected, which could have a knock-on effect for TSMC customers, like Nvidia. TSMC confirmed the news in a statement given to …

Back in May 2017, a former TSMC engineer was accused of stealing trade secrets relating to the company's 28nm process technology. Now, a similar situation has come to light this year, with another former TSMC employee charged with stealing trade secrets and attempting to take them to a new job …

We recently looked at a drive from Transcend's flagship performance SSD range – the SSD370 series, which uses MLC NAND. This time around we are looking at a drive from the other end of the spectrum, the entry level SSD220S which uses TLC NAND. The SSD220S comes in just three …

Yesterday news spread that one version of the iPhone 6s seemingly greatly outperforms the other. The A9 chip inside of the new iPhone could be manufactured by either TSMC or Samsung, with the former's version expanding battery life by as much as 20 per cent. This news has since reached …

Last year, when Apple launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the company had a bit of a PR nightmare when ‘bendgate' began making headlines. Now this year, Apple faces a new problem, which is currently being dubbed ‘chipgate'. To put it simply, the A9 processor inside of the …

Xilinx, a leading maker of programmable gate arrays as well as special-purpose system-on-chip solutions, this week said that it had made the first customer shipment of its Zynq UltraScale+ processing solution. The chip is made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s second-generation 16nm FinFET process technology (CLN16FF+) with increased performance and …

Micron Technology plans to finally start shipments of consumer solid-state drives based on triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash in the ongoing quarter, the company revealed this week. SSDs featuring TLC NAND memory will be generally more affordable than non-volatile storage solutions powered by multi-level cell (MLC) flash. “We will begin shipping …

In a bid to ensure steady supply of its latest system-on-chips for its new iPhone smartphones, Apple decided to source the SoCs from two contract makers of semiconductors: Samsung Foundry and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Apple’s new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus smartphones use A9 processors made by Samsung …

At the GPU Technology Conference in Japan, Nvidia Corp. once again revealed key features of its next-generation graphics processing architecture code-named “Pascal”. As a it appears, the company has slightly changed its plans concerning memory capacity supported by its upcoming GPUs. As expected, Nvidia’s high-end graphics processor that belongs to …

The “Zen” micro-architecture is a tremendously important project for Advanced Micro Devices. If the new technology is successful, AMD will become a viable developer of central processing units again. If not, the company will have troubles with surviving. Fortunately, “Zen” is a completely new micro-architecture that promises to be very …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has successfully produced the first samples of Nvidia Corp.’s code-named GP100 graphics processing unit. Nvidia has already started to test the chip internally and should be on-track to release the GPU commercially in mid-2016. 3DCenter reports that Nvidia has sent the first graphics cards based on the …

Nvidia Corp. has slightly changed its roadmap concerning GPU architectures. As it appear, its next-gen GPUs code-named “Pascal” are now due in 2016, whereas their successors will be released only in 2018. Based on a new roadmap that Nvidia showcased at a tech conference in Japan, the company will release its …

ARM Holdings admits that large-scale deployments of servers based on chips powered by its technologies will start only in 2016 or 2017. But while there are almost no commercial ARM servers today, the company is increasing its target market share for 2020. In fact, ARM hopes that in five years …

Although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is behind Samsung Foundry with its first-generation FinFET fabrication technology, which is why it lost orders from Apple and Qualcomm, it will still produce chips using 16nm FinFET manufacturing process for other major customers, including Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia Corp. Advanced Micro Devices plans …

Samsung Electronics indicated that it plans to start volume production of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) next year at the Intel Developer Forum this week. At the trade-show, the company revealed its current vision and expectations concerning HBM. Samsung foresees that eventually high-performance applications (such as GPUs) could feature up to six …

In the recent years, Advanced Micro Devices has reduced the amount of new graphics processors it releases per annum, which lead to massive erosion of its market share and revenue. While the company hopes that its latest product lineup will help it to regain some of the lost share and …

Despite of ongoing problems and lowering research and development budget, Advanced Micro Devices maintains optimism and claims that it will keep financing development of key products. In the recent months, Advanced Micro Devices has been criticized heavily for re-introducing its previous-generation graphics processing units under new names. The release of …

Advanced Micro Devices has confirmed that it is researching a multi-core accelerated processing unit based on “Zen” micro-architecture, which will eventually power supercomputers with extreme performance. At present the company is only considering a concept design and it is unclear when AMD decides to actually develop such processor. AMD, just …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week denied any delays of risk or mass production of chips using its 10nm process technology. The company intends to start volume production of semiconductors at 10nm node late next year, which means that its clients will receive their first 10nm chips in the first quarter …

Despite of tough times, Advanced Micro Devices plans to sustain its research and development investments on certain levels in a bid to ensure that its products are competitive in the future. Research and development are two corner stones of high-tech companies. Without fundamental research of things that may not seem important today …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced on Thursday that it had started volume production of chips using its 16nm FinFET manufacturing technology in the second quarter of 2015. The world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors is delivering the first batch of products made at 16nm node to its customers right now, …

Advanced Micro Devices said on Thursday that it had taped out its first products, which will be made using a FinFET process technology. While AMD does not reveal which products it had taped out, it is highly-likely that one of them is a highly-anticipated microprocessor based on “Zen” micro-architecture. “We …

The first-generation high-bandwidth memory provides extreme performance, but is clearly not perfect for high-end graphics cards due to capacity limitations. A good news is that second-gen high-bandwidth memory is on the way and is due in 2016. Advanced Micro Devices may get it faster and in higher volumes than its …

If the semiconductor market rumours are correct, then Intel Corp. might not be the only chipmaker, which plans to delay mass production of chips using 10nm manufacturing process. Apparently, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. postpones risk production using 10nm fabrication process by two quarters. “TSMC will start risk production in its …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has announced that it had produced the first verification chips for its 10nm manufacturing technology. The world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors plans to start risk production using 10nm fabrication process late this year and to initiate high-volume manufacturing in late 2016 or in 2017. At …

Xilinx, a leading designer of field-programmable gate arrays as well as special-purpose system-on-chip solutions, on Wednesday said that it had taped-out one of the world’s first SoCs to be made using TSMC’s 16nm FinFET+ process technology. The new chip will be used for self-driving vehicles, industrial Internet-of-Things and 5G wireless …

Micron Technology, the world’s third largest maker of computer memory, plans to close its process technology gap with market leader Samsung Electronics with its next-generation fabrication technology in the coming years. The firm hopes that its new manufacturing process will help it to lower costs and increase performance of its …

Micron Technology has been rather cautious about using triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND flash in solid-state drives and for a long time only used such memory for various removable storage applications. However, it appears that the company has finally solved all the challenges with such cheap NAND and plans to introduce an …

Earlier this year Nvidia Corp. officially named Samsung Electronics its manufacturing partner. However, as it appears, the companies still have not signed any actual deals because negotiations are proceeding with difficulties. The consequence of prolonged negotiations could result in later-than-expected release of Samsung-made Nvidia chips. Nvidia wants Samsung Electronics to …

While Advanced Micro Devices’ next-generation micro-architecture known as “Zen” looks very impressive on paper, it will not hit the market any time soon. In fact, AMD plans to release the first microprocessors featuring the new cores only in late 2016, according to a document published by a web-site. AMD’s first …