Samsung has been hard at work to catch up and compete with TSMC, the world’s leading chipset manufacturer. The company has been putting in efforts to boost its chipset production and has now started mass-producing 5nm chipset.

In a recent announcement regarding the company’s Q2 2020 performance, the South Korean giant confirmed that it has begun mass-production of 5nm chipsets. Further, the company revealed that it is also working on 4nm chipsets.

The development is in line with the company’s earlier announcement of starting mass production of 5nm chipset by the end of Q2 2020. The company reveals that it has also strengthened the foundation for expansion by starting investments in production lines in the Pyeongtaek complex.

For those who are unaware, the Pyeongtaek complex in South Korea is the new chipset production facility from Samsung which will be focusing on making 5nm chips. The company has planned to invest around KRW 10 trillion ($8.1 billion) in this facility.

The new facility is responsible for making AI-powered (artificial intelligence), high-end smartphones, and HPC (high-performing computing) chips. Samsung’s plan is to diversify applications into HPC and consumer products to improve profitability.

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On the other hand, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has already started manufacturing 5nm chipsets for Apple. The chipset, Apple A14, will be powering the company’s upcoming iPhone 12 lineup.

The company will reportedly use Exynos 1000 SoC for the upcoming Galaxy S-series flagship smartphones, which will be manufactured using the 5nm process. Not only that, but Samsung has also reportedly bagged orders for mass production of Qualcomm Snapdragon 875G and Snapdragon 735G chipsets on 5nm node.

Samsung is among the very few smartphone companies to build its own chipsets. The South Korean giant has ambitious plans for the future and aims to become the leading semiconductor company in the world by 2030.

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Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 12 series later this year powered by 5nm A14 chipset manufactured by TSMC. Now, according to a new tip by Twitter user @L0vetodream, the Taiwanese chipmaker will ship 80 million units of A15 chips to Apple in 2020.

TSMC will prepare 80 million A14 chips for Apple, in this year.

— 有没有搞措 (@L0vetodream) July 3, 2020

The Americal tech giant is reported to make a radical move with its iPhone 12 lineup this year. First, these handsets will be the first-ever 5G-ready iPhones from the company. Secondly, they are expected to come without a bundled charger and EarPods.

Now, as per a new tip, TSMC will be manufacturing 80 million units of 5nm A14 chip for Apple this year. But this goes against a recent report, which suggested the Cupertino-based company to only ship 15-20 million units of iPhone 12 devices in 2020.

So why Apple ordered these many units of A14 chips if it is going to ship less than half of that amount of iPhone 12 series? Maybe because the company might use the same chip or say A14X for new iPad Pros and ARM Macs.

But that does not make sense either as the iPad Pro 2020 was only introduced a few months back. Further, how can the iPhone maker expect to ship a large number of the first-gen ARM (aka Apple Silicon) Macs?

Hence, we highly recommend you to consider this information with a large pinch of salt.

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(Via)

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Ever since the Huawei US ban has been extended, the company is in the news every day with new developments. One of the latest reports suggests the supplies for 5nm chips by TSMC remain unaffected as the orders were placed before the new sanction.

Huawei’s upcoming high-end smartphones, possibly called Mate 40 series is rumored to be powered by a 5nm chipset. The chip in question has been long thought to be called Kirin 1020 but a new rumor from earlier today suggests it will be known as Kirin 1000, following the name of its predecessor Kirin 990.

Having said that, this 5nm chipset is being manufactured by TSMC, which is the only company to have the tech for mass production. The Taiwanese chipmaker is also making Apple’s A14 5nm chipset slated to debut on iPhone 12 series.

But when TSMC was asked to drop business with Huawei by the US government, news started emerging that the upcoming Mate 40 series will be affected due to lack of 5nm Kirin 1020 (or 1000). However, a new report says otherwise.

The sanction by the US is only applicable for future orders from September. Since the orders for the 5nm chips were placed earlier, TSMC will supply it to Huawei as planned before the sanction goes live.

Earlier reports suggested Huawei placed orders for 5nm and 7nm chips. However, this latest one says they were actually for 5nm mobile chip for Mate 40 series and 12nm chips for 5G bases stations. That is because TSMC’s 7nm production line is currently at 100%, whereas their 5nm line is said to be only at 50%.

This means Huawei currently has no one to manufacture its 7nm Kirin 980 and Kirin 990 chipsets. This could be the reason why the company has increased its orders for MediaTek chips by a whopping 300%.

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(Via)

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Huawei‘s upcoming flagship in the Mate series is expected to launch around September 2020. The device will sport top notch specs and was expected to feature HiSilicon Kirin 1020 SoC. However, a new rumor has suggested that the smartphone will feature a different chip, dubbed Kirin 1000 SoC, which is based on a 5nm fabrication process.

Mate 40 series use 5nm K1000 soc manufactured by TSMC.
Samsung also started to build 5nm production lines.

— Teme (特米) (@RODENT950) May 23, 2020

The rumor arrives through a known leakster (@RODENT950) that revealed this information on Twitter. In the tweet, he stated that the upcoming Huawei Mate 40 Pro will house the Kirin 1000 SoC, which will be manufactured by TSMC. It will be built on a 5nm process and the naming is in line with its current generation of high end 5G chips, namely the Kirin 990 processor.

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Interestingly, this rumor arrives after the Chinese tech giant had its chip supply cut off from TSMC by the US government. Although, it may be possible that Huawei had already placed an order for the 5nm chips before the new sanctions were put in place. So while the company might be able to source the new chips from the world’s largest contract chipmaker this year, the future remains a bit uncertain thereafter.

Unfortunately, finer details regarding the flagship chipset are currently unknown. The Kirin 1000 SoC was rumored to feature Cortex-A78 cores, but that has yet to be confirmed. We’ll provide more updates as additional information is uncovered, so stay tuned.

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At a time when most of the smartphone chipsets are made using 7nm node, Unisoc recently launched the world’s first 6nm chipset which was manufactured by TSMC using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). However, other companies are not much behind.

Samsung, the world’s second largest chipset maker after TSMC, has already started mass production of 6nm and 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) chipsets. Now, the company has announced that it plans to start mass production of 5nm chipsets.

The company has also added that it will continue to invest in advanced processes as well as GAA 3nm process. The Samsung V1 facility located in Hwaseong, South Korea, is the one where the production will take place. It is a specialised facility with state-of-the-art technology and is capable of production of chipsets as small as 3nm.

There are reports claiming that Google has partnered with Samsung for a custom Exynos chipset which is scheduled to release this year. The 5nm chipset is expected to feature an octa-core CPU consisting of two Cortex-A78 cores, two Cortex-A76 cores, and four Cortex-A55 cores. The graphics will be taken care of by an unannounced Mali MP20 GPU based on Borr microarchitecture. It is also said to include Google’s own Visual Core ISP and NPU instead of Samsung’s.

A couple of months ago, it was reported that Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor manufacturing division won a contract to make new Qualcomm 5G chips using . This is a major boost for the company to aims to rival TSMC.

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To get a lead among its competitors, Samsung was set to start mass production of 3nm chipset from 2021 but it seems that the company is now forced to delay the manufacturing launch of this new process till 2022, mainly because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

It is reported that the coronavirus has hampered Samsung’s ability to fulfil the scheduled installation of equipment for the new production lines. The 3nm process from Samsung is based on the Gate All Around (GAAFET) technology rather than FinFET. It supposedly reduces the total silicon size by 35 percent while using about 50 percent less power.

It also allows for the same amount of power consumption and 33 percent performance increase over the 5nm FinFET process. The GAAFET design differs from the FinFET design as it is built around having gates around four sides of the channel, which ensures reduced power leakage and improved control over the channel.

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