Companiile TSMC si ARM, partenere ale celor din Cupertino, au anuntat in cursul acestei zile intrarea intr-un parteneriat care va avea drept rezultat dezvoltarea de chip-uri folosind un proces de fabricatie de 7nm FinFET, el urmand a fi folosit pentru productie la inceputul anului 2018, deci ar putea fi utilizate in iPhone 8.
TSMC este principalul producator de chip-uri A9 si A9X pentru iDevice-uri, urmeaza sa fie principalul producator de chip-uri A10 incepand de anul acesta, iar daca lucrurile vor continua asa cum doresc taiwanezii, chip-ul A12 va fi produs tot de catre ei, dar cu un proces de fabricatie mult imbunatatit.
Apple a utilizat chip-uri ARM pana in momentul lansarii iPhone 5, insa procesoarele sale sunt gandite in continuare in baza arhitecturii celor de la ARM, chiar daca sunt fabricate de Samsung in baza specificatiilor Apple, asa ca o colaborare intre TSMC si ARM este perfect logica.
Desi in momentul de fata chip-urile produse folosind un proces de fabricatie de 10nm sunt in centrul atentiei, cei de la IBM au reusit sa produca propriile chip-uri folosind un proces de fabricatie de 7nm, dar el este foarte greu de reprodus la scara industriala, cel putin deocamdata.
O colaborare dintre TSMC si ARM i-ar permite companiei Apple sa obtina acces la tehnologii avansate la preturi foarte avantajoase, insa pana in 2018 mai este mult si la fel de multe se pot schimba, Intel putand convinge Apple sa-i foloseasca propriile chip-uri.
|
ARM and TSMC Announce Multi-Year Agreement to Collaborate on 7nm FinFET Process Technology for High-Performance Compute |
|
ARM and TSMC announced a multi-year agreement to collaborate on a 7nm FinFET process technology which includes a design solution for future low-power, high-performance compute SoCs. The new agreement expands the companies’ long-standing partnership and advances leading-edge process technologies beyond mobile and into next-generation networks and data centers. Additionally, the agreement extends previous collaborations on 16nm and 10nm FinFET that have featured ARM®Artisan® foundation Physical IP. |
|
“Existing ARM-based platforms have been shown to deliver an increase of up to 10x in compute density for specific data center workloads,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president of product groups, ARM. “Future ARM technology designed specifically for data centers and network infrastructure and optimized for TSMC 7nm FinFET will enable our mutual customers to scale the industry’s lowest-power architecture across all performance points.” “TSMC continuously invests in advanced process technology to support our customer’s success,” said Dr. Cliff Hou, vice president, R&D, TSMC. “With our 7nm FinFET, we have expanded our Process and Ecosystem solutions from mobile to high performance compute. Customers designing their next generation high-performance computing SoCs will benefit from TSMC’s industry-leading 7nm FinFET, which will deliver more performance improvement at the same power or lower power at the same performance as compared to our 10nm FinFET process node. Jointly optimized ARM and TSMC solutions will enable our customers to deliver disruptive, first-to-market products.” This latest agreement builds on ARM and TSMC’s success with previous generations of 16nm FinFET and 10nm FinFET process technology. The joint innovations from previous TSMC and ARM collaborations have enabled customers to accelerate their product development cycles and take advantage of leading-edge processes and IP. Recent benefits include early access to Artisan Physical IP and tape-outs of ARM Cortex®-A72 processor on 16nm FinFET and 10nm FinFET. |
