TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, has managed to manufacture over 1 billion 7nm chips. This arrives in just a bit over 2 years since it began manufacturing the 7nm process, which is a notable achievement that the company celebrated earlier this week.

The number of chips produced could cover 13 Manhattan city blocks. TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) began production of 7nm chips back in April 2018. Since then, the firm has “manufactured 7nm chips for well over 100 products from dozens of customers.” The customers include big names in the industry like AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, and even Huawei up until September of this year.

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In comparison, Intel, one of the other major chipmakers, has yet to transition into the 7nm process. It has faced various issues in its yield and has delayed the 7nm chips till late 2022 or early 2023. On the other hand, TSMC has already managed to equip each of its 7nm chips with at least one billion transistors inside i. In other words, the company has also managed to make more than one quintillion 7nm transistors as well.

One of the reasons through which TSMC managed to achieve this milestone is its EUV lithography technology that the company introduced with its latest generation. EUV stands for “extreme ultraviolet light” which is used to print on a scale of nanometers. This technology was particularly difficult to introduce to its mass production line, although, it has definitely paid off and the company is already working with 5nm chips as well.

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Samsung has announced a brand new mobile processor called the Exynos 990. Based on the name, this is a more powerful processor than the Exynos 980 that was announced in early September, and its specs put it in the flagship category.

The Exynos 990 is a 7nm EUV processor just like Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G chipset. The processor has eight cores in a 2+2+4 tri-cluster CPU configuration. There are 2x 5th-generation custom CPU cores + 2x Cortex-A76 cores + 4x Cortex-A55 cores. Samsung is keeping the clockspeed of the cores a mystery. However, it does say the custom CPU cores performance has increased by 20% compared to its predecessor.

The new processor has a Mali-G77 MP11 GPU which replaces the Mali-G76 MP12 GPU of the Exynos 9820. The new GPU provides an improvement in performance or power efficiency of up to 20% compared to its predecessor. With the new GPU, Samsung promises lag-free gaming.

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The Exynos 990 also has a Dual-Core NPU, an extra core more than the Exynos 9820’s NPU. There is also an improved Digital Signal Processor (DSP) which works with the new NPU for better experiences when it comes to camera performance, virtual assistant, and extended reality. The SoC supports up to six cameras with resolutions up to 108MP.

The Exynos 990 supports LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.0 and UFS 2.1 storage, and displays with up to 4K UHD resolution. It has an Exynos Modem 5123 for hyper-fast 5G speeds. Samsung says the new modem supports up to 7.35Gbps download speeds in mmWave and 5.1Gbps in sub-6GHz setting with up to 8x carrier aggregation. The new modem which is also built on the 7nm EUV process supports E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity (EN-DC) which “combines LTE and 5G connectivity to increase mobile download speed”.

Samsung’s latest processor supports 8K UHD video decoding at 30 frames per second. It also has a 120Hz refresh-rate driver display (you can clap here) alongside 10-bit video and HDR display support. Security has also been improved with a newly added integrated Security Element (iSE) layer that stores and handles personal data in a separate space from the OS.

The Exynos 990 should power Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S11 series phones scheduled for next year.

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When the Galaxy Note10 and Galaxy Note10+ launch later today, they will be powered by a new mobile processor – the Exynos 9825. Ahead of the New York Galaxy Unpacked event, Samsung has unveiled the new Exynos 9825 chipset, its first 7nm EUV mobile processor.

The Exynos 9820 which powers the Galaxy S10 series is an 8nm processor, so the biggest change here is the switch to a smaller node size. The biggest upgrades with that change are an increase in performance and power efficiency.

While the Exynos 9825 is far from being the first 7nm processor, it is actually the industry’s first to use EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) processing. Samsung says EUV allows them to use “extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to print finer circuits and develop a more power-efficient processor”.

The Exynos 9825 is an octa-core processor with 2x 4th gen Custom CPUs paired with 2x Cortex-A75 cores and 4x Cortex-A55 cores. The configuration is identical to that of the Exynos 9820. The new SoC also uses the same ARM Mali-G76 MP12 GPU as its predecessor. It supports 8K 30fps or 4K UHD 150fps encoding and decoding.

The new #Exynos9825. Power evolved for the next generation of mobile. Learn more: https://t.co/djI7vCrxXm #NextGenPower pic.twitter.com/pRX1qUWpXu

— Samsung Exynos (@SamsungExynos) August 6, 2019

It also has an integrated NPU for tasks like AI-assisted photography. It supports UFS 3.0 and UFS 2.1 storage and also LPDDR4x RAM. The SoC has a built-in 4G LTE modem but can be paired with the Exynos Modem 5100 for 5G.

The Exynos 9825 support dual camera (16MP + 16MP), a front camera of 22MP and a rear camera of 22MP. It also supports 4K UHD displays (4096 x 2160) and WQUXGA displays (3840 x 2400).

For those who are disappointed about the CPU cores and GPU, you may want to set your eyes on the Exynos chipset for next year which should feature the Cortex-A76 or Cortex-A77 Cores and maybe its first mobile GPU developed in partnership with AMD instead of Arm’s Mali-G77 GPU.

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Last year, Huawei’s Hisilicon managed to beat everyone else to release the world’s first 7nm SoC, the Kirin 980. It looks like the company will continue the trend of releasing its new-gen chip before others, with its Kirin 985 slated to go into mass production in Q2 2019.

The report from Commerical Times (via Digitimes) states that TSMC is readying its 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) process technology, dubbed as the N7+, for the mass production of Hisilicon’s new generation Kirin 985. Despite the issues associated with developing EUV, it will make the manufacturing process at 7nm, cheaper and faster.

Soon after kicking off volume production of Kirin 985, TSMC will start manufacturing Apple’s A13 chipsets by the end of Q2 2019. The Cupertino giant’s chipset will be based on a slightly different technology, dubbed as the N7 Pro. All we know about the ‘Pro’ process is that it’s an enhanced version of the N7+.

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This news is in line with a previous report which mentioned 7nm EUV process for Kirin 985. Since the new tech will speed up the manufacturing process of the chipset, Huawei should be able to ship more smartphones with this flagship processor inside. It’s important for the company to ensure a steady supply of its top-end smartphones since it aims to ship over 250 million units by the end of 2019.

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Samsung has its fingers in many pies. While most people are only aware of their phones and other electronics, the Korean giant also has a semiconductor foundry. This foundry has handled the production of Samsung’s own chips as well as that of Qualcomm and Apple. Today it announced its new 11nm LPP process which improves upon the older 14nm LPP process.

The new 11nm LPP process brings a number of features to chip production. The key ones are a reduction in chip area by 10% and a 15% increase in performance. Sadly, there is no change in power consumption. Samsung says the new process will “bring differentiated value to mid- to high-end smartphones”.

Samsung says production of new 11nm chips should begin in the first half of 2018. It also announced that the schedule for the 7nm chip is still underway and production should begin in the second half of 2018.

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The 7nmLPP is being processed with EUV (extreme ultra violet) lithography. Samsung said it has processed almost 200,000 wafers with the EUV technology and has seen visible results such as an 80% yield for 256 megabit SRAM.

More details about the 11nm process and 7nm EUV will be made available at the Samsung Foundry Forum Japan on September 15.

(Source, via)

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