TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has shared its financial report for the fourth quarter of 2019. The quarter saw the company having a growth in both revenue and profits alongside an increase in shipments of 7nm chips.

The company is a major player in the semiconductor market and is a key supplier of chipsets across smartphones and even desktop grade processors. According to the financial report, TSMC generated a revenue of 10.5 billion US Dollars out of which profits amounted to 3.8 billion US Dollars in Q4 2019. This marks a 10.6 percent of growth over Q3 2019. The figures have also slightly surpassed expectations from analysts that had predicted income of 3.7 billion US Dollars.

Notably, one of the main contributing areas where the company generated its revenue from was the 7nm chipset category. The size is currently used in various high end smartphone processors while even being the next step in advancement in computer CPUs as well. 7nm chips contributed 35 percent of total wafer revenue, in comparison, the 10nm only garnered 1 percent of the same in Q4 2019.

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As mentioned earlier, the 7nm chips are booming after AMD, a known chipmaker in the desktop PC market, ordered 20 percent of TSMC’s 7nm processing capacity. Recently, AMD‘s third generation of Ryzen processors and Radeon graphic cards have shifted towards 7nm processing, unlike Intel that is still struggling to reach 10nm after its 14nm processors. Hence, TSMC is currently seeing gross margins that have surpassed the other three quarters of 2019.

Furthermore, TSMC saw a yearly revenue of 35.7 billion US Dollars and expects to see a notable growth of 15-20 percent in revenue; thanks to the new 5nm processing nodes being planned for mass production. The smartphone market has seen stagnation recently but is still expected to see a global shipment of around 1.4 billion units in 2020, an increase of 1.5 percent over 2019 due to an increase in demand for 5G networking.

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(Via)

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Huawei just announced the Kirin 970 flagship processor and it is yet to even feature in a smartphone but rumors of a Kirin 980 processor has already started. No doubt, the Kirin 970 will likely be succeeded by the Kirin 980 but that wouldn’t happen until around this same time next year. 

Nevertheless, a few details of the next-gen chip has surfaced on Weibo. The most spectacular is that the Kirin 980 will be built on a 7nm manufacturing process. and would have the Cortex-A75 architecture. The chip will be manufactured by TSMC and the release time will be based on TSMC’s ability to mass produce the chip on time.  Also, the next-gen chip is tipped to come with some improvements in the GPU which is that it may feature Huawei’s self-researched GPU. The Kirin 980 will also likely come with artificial intelligence as well.

Read More: Huawei Unveils The Kirin 970, The World’s First Processor With A Dedicated NPU

Also, the Kirin 980 is rumoured to be used first on the Huawei P20, surprised? Sure, we have the P10 presently but instead of heading to P11, Huawei is rumoured to use P20 as the name of its next P-series flagship phone. Huawei is said to have registered a trademark for the name long ago. If this is anything to go by, it means we may likely see the Kirin 980 earlier than usual because the next P-series smartphone will likely be launched early next year, perhaps in the second quarter. However, it is still too early to conclude on this when there are loads of leaks on the way ahead before the chip is announced.

(source)

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An emerging report claims Qualcomm has opened new relationship talks with TSMC to develop a 7nm system-on-chip (SoC). Since the past few years, Qualcomm has collaborated with Samsung to produce its chips, such as the Snapdragon 820 and 835-series. However, judging by the reporter, it appears Qualcomm has lost interest in prolonging their partnership and have turned to TSMC to draw up a new business relationship, the same company that previously manufactured the Snapdragon 810.

There isn’t any clarification why Qualcomm has made a switch to TSMC, speculation indicates that Samsung’s in-house Exynos chipsets’ success may have played a decisive role in the change in Qualcomm’s tactics. We do know that Samsung has been pushing other third-party chips out of their system and replacing them their own ones, note: the Samsung S8’s CPU chip in one of the variants is a Samsung Exynos.

There are also rumors that Samsung has a GPU under the works, if this is true, this would place Samsung and Qualcomm directly head to head; and with Samsung currently making Qualcomm’s chips, this makes the relationship’s situation quite troublesome.

RELATED: Samsung could be developing its own S-GPU

Other factors, affecting Qualcomm’s decision, could be the fact that TSMC has increased the development process of the 7nm, contrary to the 10nm process. With a schedule set at late 2018 to produce the 7nm chips, Qualcomm would like to jump ahead of the processor game and take advantage of the potential benefits that competitors like Samsung could be behind in development.

If any of the rumors happen to be true, we are likely to see the first TSMC-manufactured chips available at the beginning of 2019, on schedule for the announcement of the year’s early flagship phones.

How do you feel about Qualcomm and TSMC reunion? In consideration with the Snapdragon’s 810 issues. Share your thoughts and comment below.

(Source, via)

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TSMC should not sound strange to people anymore. The world’s largest independent semiconductor foundry probably made the chip inside the phone you are holding right now. If you own an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, there’s a chance the version of the new A10 Fusion chip in it was made by TSMC.

The company, at an event has unveiled its roadmap for the coming years.

10nm Process Starting by Year End

Senior Officials have said that the company will be switching to 10nm process by year end. The new FinFET process will allow for a 50% reduction in the size of a chip and increase performance by 50% (or 40% reduction in power consumption). This news correlates with yesterday’s report on Mediatek’s new Helio X30 which says mass production should begin early next year.

Trial Production of 7nm Process in 2017. Orders Starts In April

The 10nm process has been reported to be a short term node according to GlobalFoundries who announced their new 7nm process recently. TSMC’s 7nm process will allow it to offer chips with greatly increased power efficiency. The performance increase will be around 15% and power consumption will see a decrease of 35%.

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The explanation given for the jump not being as much as that of the 10nm process is that there is usually a difference between the foundry’s marketed process and the actual physical process. Roughly speaking, the 10nm process should be equal to Intel’s 14nm process and the 7nm process should be equal to Intel’s 10nm process.

Source: wccftech.com

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