Samsung Electronics may become a new rival for Qualcomm, MediaTek and other suppliers of mobile system-on-chips as the company reportedly plans to sell its Exynos 7420 processors to third parties. For a long time, Samsung Electronics used application processors from Qualcomm inside its premium smartphones, but in the recent years …
Read More »AMD officially cancels 20nm chips, takes $33 million charge
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 »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 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 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 »ARM Cortex-A57 and Intel Silvermont – most efficient mobile cores, says study
At present there are about half of a dozen different general-purpose processing cores for various low-power system-on-chip solutions. There are high-performance, low-power, big and small cores. But when all of these metrics are taken into account, ARM and Intel have the edge over their rivals. Massive popularization of mobile and …
Read More »Samsung kicks off production of 14nm Exynos system-on-chips
Samsung Electronics has announced that it had begun mass production of a new Exynos 7 system-on-chip for mobile and multimedia devices using 14nm FinFET process technology. The news Exynos 7 Octa processor will likely power the company’s upcoming mobile devices, including flagship smartphones. Samsung started to mass produce chips using …
Read More »AMD: x86 will remain the central server micro-architecture
Even though Advanced Micro Devices and a number of other chip designers expect ARM architecture to gain a significant part of the server market in the coming years, even AMD itself admits that the good-old x86 will remain the architecture of choice for the vast majority of servers in the …
Read More »MediaTek readies system-on-chips with 10 and 12 cores
The latest mobile application processors from MediaTek already offer performance comparable to that of mobile system-on-chips from companies like Qualcomm. Apparently, the company is working on two new SoCs that promise to offer truly unbeatable performance. Unfortunately, it is completely unclear whether the new APs will be used for mobile …
Read More »Nvidia details Tegra X1: 8 cores, 256 stream processors, 4K video and 20nm
Nvidia Corp. on Monday introduced its latest addition to the Tegra family of system-on-chips for mobile devices, the Tegra X1. The new application processor features the latest ARMv8 64-bit cores, Maxwell architecture graphics, ultra-high-definition video support as well as a massive amount of camera throughput. The all-new Nvidia Tegra X1 …
Read More »Microsoft testing Windows Server OS for ARM system-on-chips
Servers based on system-on-chips featuring ARM architecture have not really become popular yet and many software developers have doubts about their viability. Microsoft seems to have certain amount of confidence in ARM-based servers and is already testing its Windows Server operating system that is compatible with appropriate chips. Microsoft has …
Read More »Samsung rolls-out eight-core Exynos 7 Octa application processor
Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its all-new Exynos 7 application processor for mobile and consumer electronics devices. The features eight processing cores, high-end graphics engine, 4K ultra-high-definition video output and a number of other innovations. The chip is made using Samsung’s latest process technology and will power numerous future devices …
Read More »AMD readies ARM-, x86-based system-on-chips for tablets
Advanced Micro Devices will introduce the first chips that belong to the Skybridge family of accelerated processing units (APUs) and system-on-chips (SoCs) in the third quarter of next year, according to unofficial information. Initially the project Skybridge offerings will target ultra-low-power applications, such as tablets. AMD’s Skybridge family of APUs …
Read More »ARM and TSMC expect first 10nm tape-outs in late 2015
ARM Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Thursday outlined some details regarding transition of chip production to 10nm FinFET manufacturing technology. The company’s reaffirmed that risk production of chips made using 10nm FF fabrication process will start in late 2015. The two companies agreed to work together on 10nm FinFET …
Read More »ARM and TSMC unveil 16nm FinFET heterogeneous multi-core CPU
ARM Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Tuesday unveiled the world’s first heterogeneous multi-core microprocessor made using 16nm FinFET (16FF) process technology. The chip, which integrates the ARM Cortex-A57 and the ARM Cortex-A53 cores, is designed to showcase that ARM’s designs and TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process technology are compatible …
Read More »TSMC builds world’s first 32-core networking chip using 16nm FinFET process technology
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Thursday said that it has built the world’s first many-core networking processor for next-generation wireless communications and routers using 16nm FinFET fabrication technology. The ultra-thin manufacturing process will allow the many-core chip to deliver high performance and rich feature-set while consuming low amounts of power. …
Read More »ARM signs 50th 64-bit ARMv8-A licensing agreement
ARM Holding this week said it has signed its 50th licensing agreement for its ARMv8-A technology, which includes support for 64-bit computing. The milestone indicates growing popularity of ARM’s 64-bit technology among developers of various system-on-chips. It is likely that going forward the adoption of the ARMv8-A will accelerate. ARM …
Read More »AMD ready to build custom 64-bit ARM processors for servers
Advanced Micro Devices yet has to commercially ship its first ARMv8-based system-on-chip for servers code-named Seattle. Nonetheless, the company already says that it is ready to develop semi-custom server-class SoCs for servers based on the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. The company already offers customized Opteron chips powered by its x86 cores. …
Read More »AMD begins to sell ARMv8 Opteron ‘Seattle’ kits to software developers
Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday began to sell server software development kits based on its multi-core AMD Opteron A1100-series code-named “Seattle” server microprocessors that employ the ARM Cortex-A57 cores. At present AMD is the only provider of 64-bit ARM server hardware with complete ARMv8 instruction set support to foster the …
Read More »MediaTek readies system-on-chip for high-end smartphones, tablets
For many years MediaTek has been a supplier of affordable system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for smartphones and inexpensive tablets. However, starting this year the company will start to offer higher-performance application processors aimed at mainstream devices. But MediaTek does not want to stop there. A leaked roadmap shows that next year the Hsinchu, …
Read More »Qualcomm unveils next-gen Snapdragon processors: 64-bit, 4K video, LTE-A
Qualcomm on Monday announced two new high-end application processors for smartphones and tablets. The new chips integrate 64-bit general-purpose cores, new-generation Adreno graphics engines, 2K/4K video processing as well as 4G/LTE Advanced modem that supports 3*20MHz carrier aggregation, enabling speeds of up to 300Mb/s. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 and …
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