Advanced Micro Devices this week formally confirmed that it would not produce any of its chips using 20nm process technology at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Instead, the company will focus on development of its chips to be made using various FinFET process technologies. As a result of the cancellation, the …
Read More »Xilinx tapes-out world’s first 16nm FinFET+ system-on-chip
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 …
Read More »UMC: 14nm FinFET technology will be ready for tape outs by year end
United Microelectronics Corp. said on Tuesday that it has successfully taped out a test chip from ARM using its 14nm FinFET fabrication technology. The company also revealed that the new manufacturing process will be ready for customer tape outs by the end of the year. UMC and ARM recently taped …
Read More »AMD’s 2016 APUs to be powered by ‘Excavator’ x86 cores – slides
Advanced Micro Devices will not use its next-generation high-performance “Zen” micro-architecture for its accelerated processing units next year, if excerpts from an alleged AMD presentation published by a web-site are to be believed. While the slides reveal AMD’s intentions, they do not answer all the questions about the forthcoming chip. …
Read More »Qualcomm teams up with Chinese government for server CPUs
Qualcomm Technologies has reportedly signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Chinese government under which it will develop server-class microprocessors. The chips will eventually be used inside Chinese servers, which will ensure a steady revenue stream for Qualcomm. Under the terms of the document signed by Qualcomm and the authorities, …
Read More »ARM’s high-end ‘Ares’ core for 10nm SoCs may be unveiled next year
ARM Holdings may be accelerating its development cycles in a bid to offer better solutions for the booming market of smartphones and the emerging market of low-power servers, according to a high-tech analyst. Faster design cycles mean that ARM is making a step closer to Intel's tick-tock cadence. Technologies developed …
Read More »Nvidia: We’ve learnt a lot from the automotive industry
Nvidia Corp. is one of the world’s most successful developers of graphics processors ever, but the company is constantly searching for new markets for itself. Cars nowadays require a lot of general-purpose processing horsepower and visual processing capabilities, something that Nvidia can deliver thanks to its expertise in GPUs and …
Read More »Nvidia’s Tegra X1-based Shield game console certified in S. Korea
Nvidia Corp.’s first Tegra-based Shield portable video game console has failed to become popular on the market, but the company still believes that it can create a commercially successful dedicated gaming device for Google Android titles. In fact, Nvidia’s second-gen Shield powered by its latest Tegra X1 application processors has …
Read More »AMD: 20nm ‘Amur’ and ‘Nolan’ will ‘probably’ not go into production
Advanced Micro Devices said this week that its accelerated processing units code-named “Amur” and “Nolan” will probably never go into mass production. The company believes that their performance will not be competitive and its future products made using FinFET fabrication processes have better chances to become successful. After Lisa Su …
Read More »AMD delays introduction of K12-based processors to 2017
Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday said that it will delay high-volume shipments of microprocessors powered by its custom ARMv8-compatible “K12” cores to 2017. The company did not reveal any reasons behind the postponement. AMD’s “K12” core is the company’s first 64-bit ARMv8-A-compatible microprocessor engine designed entirely in-house. Development of the …
Read More »Eight-core chips for smartphones to cost below $10 this year – report
Last year Intel Corp. dramatically reduced prices of high-performance multi-core system-on-chip for tablets in a bid to gain market share. This year Qualcomm intends to slash pricing of its multi-core application processors for smartphones in a bid to sustain its share on the market of smartphones in China. DigiTimes reports …
Read More »Phytium to detail 64-core ARMv8-A processor for HPC in August
The U.S. government recently banned sales of Xeon Phi co-processors for high-performance computing applications to numerous supercomputer sites in China, slowing down development of local research. But perhaps, China will not need any HPC chips from the world’s renowned suppliers in the future as domestic companies are developing a number …
Read More »No more cats: AMD reconsiders ultra-low-power CPU roadmap
Advanced Micro Devices first revealed plans to develop special low-power/low-cost x86 micro-architectures in mid-2007 in a bid to compete for ultra-portable and inexpensive devices. The micro-architectures got their names – Bobcat, Jaguar and Puma – from cats to emphasize their agility and efficiency. Eight years later AMD abandons development of …
Read More »Samsung’s own Exynos M1 CPU core already supported by software tools
It is not a secret that Samsung Electronics is developing its own 64-bit ARMv8-A-compatible general-purpose processing core. This month the full-custom core from the company gained support from developers of tools used to create software. The latest versions of GNU Binutils, a collection of binary tools, as well as GNU …
Read More »ARM: 20% of servers to be ARM-based by 2020
Despite of a lot of hype about ARM-based servers in the recent years, actual number of their deployments remains very low. However, ARM Holdings is optimistic about its market opportunities and expects 20 per cent of servers to be ARM-based by 2020. In a bid to dramatically increase its share of …
Read More »ARM: Our cores have enough performance for notebooks
Rumours about personal computers in clamshell form-factors powered by microprocessors featuring ARM architecture have been floating around for years, but only recently select Chinese companies released notebooks with Google Chrome OS that actually use ARM-based system-on-chips. According to ARM Holdings, these systems are only the beginning. “Just recently we have …
Read More »ARM CPU roadmap revealed: Ares, Prometheus, Ananke and Mercury in development
ARM Holdings is developing a broad family of general-purpose processing cores that will be made using 10nm and 16nm process technologies, according to a roadmap that was revealed earlier this month. Just like today, the upcoming cores from ARM will address different segments of the market. Earlier this year ARM …
Read More »AMD initiates revenue shipments of ‘Carrizo’ hybrid processors
Advanced Micro Devices initiated revenue shipments of its new “Carrizo” accelerated processing unit in the first quarter of this year. The chips have been validated by PC makers and they are on-track to introduce systems powered by the latest A-series APUs in the second quarter of 2015. “We also successfully …
Read More »AMD delays its first ARM-based Opteron ‘Seattle’ CPU to 2H 2015
Advanced Micro Devices this week confirmed that it plans to start volume shipments of its first 64-bit ARMv8-A-based Opteron microprocessor code-named “Seattle” in the second half of this year, which represents a massive one year postponement. The reasons of the delay are unclear, it is also unknown whether AMD has …
Read More »AMD to focus on high-performance server CPUs, abandons SeaMicro
Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday said that as a part of the strategy to simplify and sharpen the company’s investment focus, AMD would exist the micro-server systems business, which was formerly known as SeaMicro. The company will retain SeaMicro’s Freedom fabric and other intellectual property, but will cease to invest …
Read More »Samsung’s own CPU core took years to develop – report
Samsung Electronics has developed and built its Exynos application processors for years, but its chips are always powered by off-the-shelf general-purpose and graphics processing cores from ARM, which limits their advantages over competing system-on-chips. Everything is going to change next year, when Samsung finally rolls-out its new SoCs featuring its …
Read More »Nvidia Tegra X1 to power desktops, notebooks, tablets, portable consoles
Unveiled early this year, Tegra X1 system-on-chip from Nvidia Corp. was positioned mainly for automotive applications. However, given rather serious processing horsepower it has, it can be used for many other devices. In fact, according to recent leaks and listings, Nvidia and its partners plan to use the Tegra X1 …
Read More »AMD unveils CPU and GPU roadmaps for the next five years
Advanced Micro Devices has demonstrated its roadmaps for the next five years. While the company did not disclose almost any details about its future products, it is important that AMD actually has plans that can be executed. AMD’s Junji Hayashi demonstrated a number of slides revealing the company’s roadmaps at …
Read More »New leak points towards Snapdragon 815 specs
Qualcomm’s next flagship smartphone chip, the Snapdragon 815, is on the way according to new leaks. The Snapdragon 815 will reportedly be an eight core chip with four Cortex-A72 processor cores and four Cortex-A53 processor cores. This information all comes from GizmoChina, which has had a string of leaks recently. …
Read More »Samsung rumoured to consider buying Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices faces hard times these days as sales of its central processing units and graphics processing units have been hitting new lows for many quarters. As a result, rumours about possible acquisitions of AMD resurrect. Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, is considering to acquire Advanced …
Read More »AMD still has not started to use 20nm process tech
Late last year Advanced Micro Devices said that it would use 20nm fabrication technology offered by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., but only for for select products. According to AMD’s recent filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the company has not yet started to use the 20nm manufacturing process. AMD …
Read More »AMD develops custom server microprocessor for Facebook – source
Advanced Micro Devices is working on a server-class system-on-chip (SoC) for Facebook. While not a lot of details are known about the microprocessor today, if Facebook adopts the chip for its datacentres, it will be a major revenue opportunity for AMD. As Facebook’s infrastructure has scaled, the company ran into …
Read More »Khronos unveils Vulkan: API for wearables, computers, cars and drones
Khronos Group on Tuesday introduced what was originally known as the next-generation OpenGL initiative, a brand-new application programming interface called Vulkan. The new API is designed to replace OpenGL in the long-term future and will address loads of markets and platform. The Vulkan is a new low-overhead/high-throughput API that provides …
Read More »AMD details ‘Carrizo’: High-density design, lowered power consumption
At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2015 Advanced Micro Devices unveiled the first official details regarding its code-named “Carrizo” accelerated processing units. As reported, the new chips are aimed specifically at notebooks and therefore were designed from the ground up to be extremely power efficient and integrate all functionality possible. …
Read More »Qualcomm fits-in ARM Cortex-A72, 4K support into mainstream SoCs
Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of mobile application processors, has introduced its new lineup of mobile system-on-chips for mainstream smartphones, tablets and other devices. The new Snapdragon 600-series application processors feature ARM’s latest Cortex-A72 cores, support 4K video capture and playback, advanced storage technologies, a number of other high-end features …
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