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IBM expands strategic partnership with Samsung to include <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> chip manufacturing

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IBM expands strategic partnership with Samsung to include 7nm chip manufacturing

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced an agreement with Samsung to manufacture 7-nanometer (nm) microprocessors for IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and LinuxONE, high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and cloud offerings.The agreement combines Samsung’s industry-leading semiconductor manufacturing with IBM’s high-performance CPU designs. This combination is being designed to drive unmatched systems performance, including acceleration, memory and I/O bandwidth, encryption and compression speed, as well as system scaling. It positions IBM and Samsung as strategic partners leading the new era of high-performance computing specifically designed for AI.“At IBM, our first priority is our clients,” said John Acocella, Vice President of Enterprise Systems and Technology Development for IBM Systems. “IBM selected Samsung to build our next generation of microprocessors because they share our level of commitment to the performance, reliability, security, and innovation that will position our clients for continued success on the next generation of IBM hardware.”Today’s announcement also expands and extends the 15-year strategic process technology R&D partnership between the two companies which, as part of IBM’s Research Alliance, includes many industry firsts such as the first NanoSheet Device innovation for sub 5nm, the production of the industry’s first 7nm test chip and the first High-K Metal Gate foundry manufacturing. IBM’s Research Alliance ecosystem continues to define the leadership roadmap for the semiconductor industry.“We are excited to expand our decade-long strategic relationship with IBM with our 7nm EUV process technology,” said Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “This collaboration is an important milestone for Samsung’s foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s cutting-edge high performance EUV process technology.”Samsung is a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation, a vendor ecosystem facilitating the development of IBM Power architecture-based customized servers, networking and storage for future data centers and cloud computing. Samsung is also a member of the Q Network to help advance the understanding of applications software in quantum computing for the industry.

Key word：

IBM,Samsung

Release time：2018-12-21 00:00 reading：2836 Continue reading>>

x86 Server CPUs Remain Market Mainstream, <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> Platform May Help AMD to Increase Market Share

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x86 Server CPUs Remain Market Mainstream, 7nm Platform May Help AMD to Increase Market Share

DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, notes that x86 continues to be the mainstream architecture for server CPUs this year, with Intel and AMD being the market leaders. Particularly, Intel dominantly represents around 98% of the total server CPU shipments worldwide in 2018. For the next year, the market share of AMD x86 server CPUs is expected to go up to 5%, after the company’s introduction of 7nm CPUs to the market.“Generally speaking, Intel will remain the leader in server CPU market”, says Mark Liu, senior analyst from DRAMeXchange. However, competitions will come from AMD, who is on pace to migrate to more advanced processes and to offer solutions with better performances and lower power consumption. AMD’s solutions have been adopted by a small scale of cloud service providers like Baidu, Ali Cloud and AWS. AMD may have a chance to scale up in volumes after 7nm products are launched in the future.Purley Gen 2 remains in 14nm process, AMD 7nm solutions may be released in 2H19The latest survey of mainstream server CPU platforms finds that the market penetration rate of product lines based on Intel Purley Gen 1 (Sky Lake) has already reached 60% and is estimated to reach 65% at the end of 2018. Current consumers of Sky Lake products are mainly cloud service providers and alike, which require high-performance computing server products.In terms of product plan for the next year, Purley Gen 2 Cascade Lake will be still produced on 14nm process, the same as Gen 1. The new solution will not become the market mainstream until 2H19. For customized premium products, Intel will release Cascade Lake Xeon-AP (Advance Performance) in 2019. Currently, this product line still remains in the stage of verifying, so its small-scale market release will be delayed to the end of 2019.Around 70% of AMD's product lines have been transferred to new EPYC systems this year, while the company’s Naples solutions have migrated from 28/32nm to 14nm process, with computing performance improved significantly. However, AMD takes only about 2% in the current server CPU market. This is because AMD provides mainly 1-socket solutions, and the limited offerings have constrained the company’s market expansion compared with Intel.AMD's new solution, Rome, will migrate to the 7nm process. The company will also switch from GlobalFoundries to TSMC for future collaboration of product development on 7nm process. Previous problems of high power consumption will also be corrected. The Rome platform server processors are expected to enter production in 1Q19 and have a chance to come onto the market in the second half of next year.DRAMeXchange notes that the penetration of new platforms may drive the average content per box in servers. In 2019, the average density of DRAM in a server will see an annual growth of 25% YoY, significantly lower than almost 40% growth in 2018.

Key word：

Market trend

Release time：2018-11-29 00:00 reading：1052 Continue reading>>

Samsung Ramps <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> EUV Chips

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Samsung Ramps 7nm EUV Chips

The race is on to get the first chip made with extreme ultraviolet lithography out the foundry door.Samsung said it has taped out and is ramping multiple 7nm chips using EUV following a similar announcement earlier this month from its larger foundry rival TSMC. Samsung also gave its supporting IP and EDA infrastructure a boost and detailed its packaging capabilities in an effort to catch up with TSMCs ecosystem.The South Korean giant also announced it is sampling 256-GByte RDIMMs based on its 16-Gbit DRAM chips and plans for solid-state drives with embedded Xilinx FPGAs. But the 7nm news was the highlight of the event, a milestone fueled in part by its internal development of an EUV mask inspection system.The 7LPP process will deliver up to a 40% shrink and up to 20% higher speeds or 50% lower power consumption compared to its 10nm node. Separately, Samsung said it now has 50 foundry partners including Ansys, Arm, Cadence (which has digital and analog flows for 7nm), Mentor, Synopsys and VeriSilicon, which said it taped out a chip in the 7nm process.The process is said to have attracted customers who include Web giants, networking companies and mobile vendors such as Qualcomm. However, Samsung expects no customer announcements until early next year.EUV systems supported 250W light sources on a sustained basis since early this year at Samsung’s S3 fab in Hwaseong, South Korea, said Bob Stear, director of foundry marketing at Samsung. The power level drove throughput up to the needed 1,500 wafers/day for production. Since then, EUV systems have hit a peak 280W, and Samsung targets 300W, he said.EUV eliminates a fifth of masks required with traditional argon-flouride systems, raising yields. However, the node still requires some multi-patterning in base layers at the front-end-of-line, said Stear.Samsung developed its own system to compare and fix expected and actual mask patterns to speed EUV into production. G. Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research described it as a mask review system because it’s unclear if it is as automated as typical third-party inspection systems.The 7nm node will meet Grade 1 AEC-Q100 automotive standards by the end of the year. In packaging, Samsung is developing an RDL interposer that will enable up to 8 HBM stacks on a single device. It is also working on a process to embed passives in a substrate to save space for data center chips.Both Samsung and TSMC will apply EUV probably only to two chip layers at 7nm, so far not using protective pellicles that are still in development, said Handel Jones, president of International Business Strategies. They will extend EUV to perhaps six layers at 5nm nodes, but that may not come until 2021 when pellicles will have sufficient durability and light-transmission capabilities, he said.“Samsung is about six months ahead with an EUV process because they have been using the systems with DRAM and logic, but TSMC is way ahead in enablement with IP and tools and is working with more customers such as AMD, Apple, HiSilicon and Nvidia, among others,” said Jones.Another analyst said Cisco, a customer of the former IBM foundry business, is now working with TSMC for 7nm products. Qualcomm is expected to split its 7nm work between TSMC and Samsung.Nevertheless, Jones forecasts the South Korean giant’s revenues, on track to hit $90 billion this year, could leap to more than $150 billion by 2027. The prediction is based more on growth in its memory business, where he estimates Samsung will rise to command 50% of DRAM and 45% of NAND sales.Samsung is on track to start production of 5 and 4nm nodes before June, providing evolutionary improvements with the same device sets. PDKs for the nodes could be released before the end of the year, and a second shell for EUV production is being built next to the S3 fab, said Stear.The three nodes will move the contact closer to and eventually over the gate to increase density and reduce metal pitches. It’s an approach Intel previously discussed for its 10nm node that is still not in volume production.“We’re doing contact-over-gate in steps. It’s a hard problem to solve, as some are finding out,” said Stear.Samsung announced in May its plans to move to gate-all-around transistors also described as nanosheets for a 3nm node. It aims to drop nominal voltage to a new low to continue power savings. First cut of a version 0.1 PDK for a 3nm node could be available by June.Samsung has a laundry list of packaging options already available in house.In its core memory business, Samsung said it is sampling 256GByte RDIMMs made with its 16Gbit chips. The cards running at DDR4 speeds up to 3200 MHz and supporting 50ns reads and writes should be in production before the end of the year.The chips are made in a 1y-nm process first described a year ago. It was not clear whether EUV is being applied to the 1y process. However, follow-on 1z and 1a nodes will increasingly use EUV, Samsung’s head of DRAM development, Seong Jin Jang, suggested in a talk here.Samsung showed eight of the DIMMs running on an AMD Epyc server. They hit 3.2 million operations/second at 170W compared to its existing 128GB cards delivering 3.8 million ops/s at 225W.Ultimately, Samsung aims to boost DIMMs to 768 GBytes. It also aims to raise HBM data rates to 512 GB/second from 307 GB/s today. GDDR6 graphics memories will hit 22 Gbits/s from 18 Gbits/s today, and LPDDR memories will fall from 24 mW/GB to 12 mW/GB, he added without providing time frames.Separately, Samsung announced plans for smart solid-state-drives (SSDs) using embedded Xilinx Zynq FPGAs to bolster performance 2.8-3.3x. The devices target a wide range of database, AI, video and storage applications.The SSDs will provide an easier way to scale performance than matching banks of standard FPGAs to separate accelerators, the company said. The products, still in a prototype phase, will use a range of densities and medium-grade FPGAs.The smart SSD is so far only a prototype without specs or a delivery date

Key word：

Samsung

Release time：2018-10-18 00:00 reading：2023 Continue reading>>

GlobalFoundries Halts <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> Work

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GlobalFoundries Halts 7nm Work

The race to drive semiconductor technology to the bleeding edge has narrowed to three companies.Globalfoundries suspended work on a 7nm node. It will lay off less than 5% of its workforce and make its ASIC group a wholly-owned subsidiary so it can partner with one of the remaining 7nm foundries.It would have cost GF $2-4 billion to ramp up the 40-50,000 wafers/month capacity needed to have a chance of making a return on the node. “The financial investment didn’t make as much sense as doing something else,” said Tom Caulfield, the former general manager of Fab 8 named chief executive of GF in March.In an interview in May, Caulfield said GF’s owners the Mubadala Investment Company in the United Arab Emirates, wanted improved financial performance. In June, the company announced a 5% layoff without cutting any products, affecting about 900 of its 18,000 employees.“The lion’s share of our customers…have no plans for” 7nm chips. Industry-wide demand for the 14/16 node was half the volume of 28nm, and 7nm demand may be half the level of the 14/16nm node, Caulfield said.“When we look out to 2022, two-thirds of the foundry market will be in nodes at 12nm and above, so it’s not like we are conceding a big part of this market,” he added.The decision forces AMD, GF’s closest customer, to source all its initial 7nm chips from TSMC at a time when the graphics and x86 processor vendor is gaining market share. Whether AMD can get all the wafers it needs in the short term “is a good question,” said analyst Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group.“AMD was hoping GF was a second source, so it could have as many wafers as it needed but now they have to compete with Apple and others for TSMC’s attention.” Given Samsung’s decision to start production by early next year on a 7nm node with EUV steppers “everyone is flocking to TSMC for 7nm, supposedly even Qualcomm,” said Gwennap.IBM, GF’s other close partner, has more breathing room to find a new foundry for its Power10 processor, not slated to ship until 2020 or later. The two customers were part of the heritage of GF that started as a spin-off of AMD’s fabs, later acquiring Chartered in Singapore and IBM’s fab operations in 2015.For its part, GF will focus on enhancements to its 14/12nm node and the ramp of its fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) just starting to gain traction.GF will add to its FinFET nodes RF capabilities, new embedded memories such as MRAM and performance and leakage improvements. It is ramping its 22nm FD-SOI, working on a 12nm FD-SOI and expanding partnerships and features such as embedded memory for the process. Plans for a joint venture fab in China remain unchanged.“We call this move a pivot. We will go from needing more investment in 2019-2020 to generating respectable free cash flow in 2019 and competitive free cash flow in 2020,” targeting 10-15% of revenue, said Caulfield.Market watchers at IC Insights pegged GF as a distant second to TSMC with about $6 billion in 2017 revenues, slightly ahead of UMC and Samsung roughly tied for third at nearly $5 billion each. Overall, the move is a positive one for GF that had been increasingly falling behind TSMC in leading-edge FinFET processes, said Gwennap.“They only had one customer for 7nm, so it didn’t make sense to ramp a fab. At the rate they were going, they would have trouble generating enough revenue to keep research going. Focusing on FD-SOI and RF can keep its cost structure in line, and that should enable them at least survive and potentially do really well,” he said.Through its acquisition of IBM’s semiconductor group, GF has a significant share in making RF front ends, especially in handsets. It’s a position the foundry could parlay into other markets said multiple analysts.TSMC is the immediate winner, securing all the first wave of 7nm designs, some of which could start sampling by year’s end. However, Samsung could pick up new customers as it ramps its EUV process next year.While TSMC will probably make Qualcomm’s 7nm Snapdragon SoC expected to sample late this year, the mobile chip maker will likely move back to Samsung for a follow-on chip given their close relationship, Gwennap added.“The GF announcement almost assures TSMC to exit 2018 with 95% market share of 7nm, a very fast-growing revenue node that should be quite profitable for them. The lack of competition will result in keeping prices high,” said Len Jelinek, a chief semiconductor analyst for IHS Markit.GF’s exit from 7nm probably won’t help Samsung significantly, Jelinek said. “The new clients that would become available would be the ASIC companies that were tied to GF through the former IBM ASIC group. Although some of them may choose to go to Samsung next year, my guess is they will go to TSMC,” Jelinek said.The remaining player in the Moore’s law race, Intel, now appears to be in the middle of the pack.“Intel’s road map is so messed up right now,” said Gwennap, noting its plans to ship 10nm products in 2019 using optical steppers are at least a year behind its original schedule.Plans for a 10nm upgrade to EUV will likely be pushed off to a 7nm Intel node in 2020 or beyond. “Now Intel will be late with EUV because they have bigger problems” getting 10nm chips out, he said.GF’s news arguably is an opening for Intel’s foundry business which to date has not gotten much traction, estimated by IC Insights as less than $500 million in annual revenues. Had Intel been aggressively executing a low power foundry strategy this would have been a great opportunity to gain momentum,” Jelinek said.Overall the industry’s pace of CMOS scaling has slowed in the last two or three years, said Jelinek. “This announcement places more ownership on TSMC to be the real steward of the industry,” he said.

Key word：

GlobalFoundries

Release time：2018-08-28 00:00 reading：1277 Continue reading>>

Apple starts production of its <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> A12 chips for 2018 iPhones

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Apple starts production of its 7nm A12 chips for 2018 iPhones

Like last year, there are going to be three new iPhone models introduced later in 2018 and all of them are going to have a bezel-less design. One other similarity is that all three models are going to be using the Apple A12 chipset made using the 7nm technology from TSMC.There will be lots of benefits to using newer technology in the 2018 iPhone lineup and with mass production started by Apple, it does not appear like a delay in the launch of the newer models is going to show up in the middle of this progress.A12 promises at least 20% better performanceWith Apple having started working on the mass production phase, TSMC earlier promised that its 7nm technology will be able to show at least 20% better performance as compared to the 10nm process and up to 40% energy efficiency. The A12 might also be smaller, faster and will consume less power thanks to the latest advancements undertaken by TSMC.As a result, if the new iPhones possess the same batteries as the models that were released last year, they will still be able to show better battery endurance for the buyer. Apps will also open up much faster thanks to the improved performance of the chip and overall performance will be noticeable.iPhone 2018 lineup: Specifications, FeaturesMost of us already know that there are going to be three brand new models that Apple will be announced during the month of September. One of them will be the iPhone X Plus, the second one will be an iPhone X successor, and the third model is going to be that iPhone to feature a bezel-less display, but instead of an OLED, it will come shipped with an LCD screen for a cheaper price.The iPhone X Plus will be the biggest phone that Apple has ever produced and it is going to be the same size as the iPhone 8 Plus according to rumors. Though it might have a massive screen, it should still be easier for people to carry who have slightly larger palms.The iPhone X successor is expected to feature the same 5.8-inch display as the iPhone X model that was released in 2017. Several reports have repeatedly said that component orders are going to be in check this time, so there should be no delay when it comes to a proper release of all three models. Apple has also been reported to price these phones in the same manner as the iPhone X so you will need to spend more money again if you will be upgrading.iPhone 2018: PriceThe 6.4-inch OLED iPhone X Plus, with some rumors claiming that the screen size could go up to 6.5 inches will retail for $1,099 (unofficial price of Rs. 75,204.57). The smaller 5.8-inch OLED version will retail for $999 (unofficial price of Rs. 68,361.57), and the 6.1-inch model with LCD technology will be sold for $750 (unofficial price of Rs. 51,322.50).iPhone 2018 lineup: Release date in IndiaThe announcement of all three models will take place during the month of September, with Apple putting them officially on sale in the following week because component shortages might not happen this time as it did during the iPhone X launch. In India, the launch of the three new iPhone models is going to take place after September 2018.The advantage for buyers is that after the iPhone X Plus, iPhone X successor and the iPhone 9 are officially put on sale in India, the models released in 2017 will become cheaper. Apple promises software updates for iPhones longer than any Android competitor, so even if you get a model released in 2017, you will get to experience the best features from upcoming software releases.

Key word：

Apple

Release time：2018-05-29 00:00 reading：975 Continue reading>>

Qualcomm Taps Samsung's <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> EUV for 5G

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Qualcomm Taps Samsung's 7nm EUV for 5G

　　SAN FRANCISCO — Qualcomm said it will continue to work with longtime foundry supplier Samsung Electronics on Snapdragon 5G chipsets using Samsung's 7nm Low Power Plus (LPP) process technology with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.　　Samsung aims to take the lead in putting long-delayed EUV into production, with plans to use it in its 7nm LPP process starting in the second half of this year. Other leading-edge chip makers-- including Intel, TSMC and Globalfoundries--are targeting EUV production sometime in 2019.　　Qualcomm (San Diego) said using the 7nm LPP EUV process technology for Snapdragon 5G will give the chips a smaller footprint, providing handset OEMs with space to support larger batteries or slimmer designs. The process technology and design of the Snapdragon chips is expected to result in significant improvements in battery life, Qualcomm said.　　The 7nm LPP process offers up to a 40 percent increase in area efficiency with 10 percent higher performance or up to 35 percent lower power consumption compared to the foundry's 10nm FinFET technology, Samsung said.　　Samsung has been building chips for Qualcomm for more than 10 years. While the announcement that Qualcomm will use Samsung's 7nm LPP process technology for its 5G Snapdragon chips is hardly unexpected, the news does demonstrate that the relationship between the two companies remains strong after the Nikkei news service reported late last year that Qualcomm would move some of its modem chip production from Samsung to rival TSMC, The announcement is also a vote of confidence for EUV technology, which after decades of development finally appears poised for use in semiconductor production.　　"This collaboration is an important milestone for our foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s leading process technology," said Charlie Bae, executive vice president of Samsung's foundry sales and marketing team, in a statement.　　Samsung maintains that its 7LPP EUV technology involves less process complexity and will offer higher yield compared to its 10nm FinFET technology.

Key word：

Qualcomm,5G ,Samsung

Release time：2018-02-26 00:00 reading：1103 Continue reading>>

Intel, G’foundries Bring 10, <span style='color:red'>7nm</span> to IEDM

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Intel, G’foundries Bring 10, 7nm to IEDM

　　Intel and Globalfoundries will describe their 10nm and 7nm process nodes, respectively at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in December. The event also will host papers pointing to new directions in memories, medical and flexible electronics and transistors beyond today’s FinFETs.　　Intel will discuss several aspects of its 10nm node first unveiled in March. It sports FinFETs with a 7nm fin width at a 34nm pitch and a 46nm fin height made using self-aligned quadruple patterning. A 204 Mbit SRAM made in the process packs separate high-density, low voltage and high-performance cells that measure from 0.0312?m2 to 0.0441?m2.　　The 12-metal interconnect layers in the node can support multiple threshold voltages. Compared to its 14nm process, the 10nm node sports NMOS and PMOS current that is 71 percent and 35 percent greater. Cobalt wires in the lowest two metal layers offer up to 10x improvement in electro-migration and a 2x reduction in via resistance.　　For its part, Globalfoundries will detail a 0.0269?m2 SRAM cell made in its 7nm FinFET process tat was discussed at a September company event. Compared to its current 14nm process licensed from Samsung, the 7nm node should deliver 2.8x better routed logic density and more than 40 percent more performance or 55 percent lower power.　　Like Intel, the Globalfoundries node will support a range of threshold voltages. It uses self-aligned quad patterning to make fins and double patterning for metallization.　　A handful of papers will provide a view of research on the possible successors to the FinFET as a basic electronics switch.　　Imec researchers will present at least three papers on the subject, including oneon what it claims is the first circuit built with stacked silicon nanowires. The working ring oscillator used a new metallization process for n-type devices that led to greater control of threshold voltage.　　The MOSFET structures essentially wrap a gate around a nanowire to act as a transistor channel. In a separate paper, Imec will report performance characteristics of nanowires and nanosheets, arrays of the gate-all-around nanowires. Vertical test devices built in InGaAs showed Ion performance of 397?A/?m and peak transconductance of 1.6S/?m at Vds=0.5V.　　Separately, Globalfoundries will describe a ring oscillator built with 14nm ferroelectric FinFETs. It ran at the same frequencies but lower power than similar devices in silicon. The doped hafnia structures have negative capacitance, so they could be used in commercial fabs, it said.　　In memory papers, Macronix will report an advance in 3D NAND and SK Hynix will share work on ReRAM. In addition, IBM and CEA-Leti will give separate talks on their work in monolithic 3D integration.　　In heath care, Swiss researchers will describe a low power sensor made using FD-SOI that can collect and measure in real time biomarkers from sweat. Separately, a team led by the Houston Methodist Research Institute will describe implantable devices enabling controlled release over time of drugs or hormones via nanofluidic channels.　　Pointing to new directions in flexible electronics, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin will discuss how they built a variety of two- and three-terminal graphene and MoS2 devices on paper. The graphene devices achieved a record 25 GHz cutoff frequency and performance remained high even when the paper was rolled into a two-inch diameter roll.

Key word：

Intel,7nm,IEDM

Release time：2017-10-19 00:00 reading：1137 Continue reading>>

MediaTek Chooses TSMC for <span style='color:red'>7nm</span>

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MediaTek Chooses TSMC for 7nm

　　MediaTek, the second-largest designer of mobile phone chips after Qualcomm, says it has chosen Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to make 7nm products.　　While it did not disclose a timeframe for the products, MediaTek said it is cooperating closely with its long-term fab partner at the new node.　　"Low-power computing is the focus of TSMC and MediaTek," said Rick Tsai, the new co-CEO of MediaTek, during an investor event at the company headquarters in the Hsinchu Science Park. "We hope TSMC's leading-edge technology will help us create new business."　　Tsai, who was president and CEO at TSMC from 2005 to 2009, is switching roles from boss at the world's biggest foundry to a key customer.　　"TSMC has a very competitive node at 7nm," Tsai said. "TSMC's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) approach is good."　　MediaTek's choice may be another sign that TSMC has gained an advantage over rival Samsung in the race to deliver 7nm silicon. MediaTek competitor Qualcomm appears to have also chosen TSMC for the 7nm version of its Snapdragon line of smartphone chips, according to media reports. Qualcomm was the first company to make 10nm chips, using Samsung as its foundry this year.　　Despite speculation that Tsai might use his background with TSMC to squeeze the company for better pricing or even shift more of MediaTek's business to smaller foundries, the ties between TSMC and MediaTek appear solid.　　"We haven't talked too much about a fab strategy yet," Tsai said while sitting together with MediaTek Chairman M. K. Tsai at the Hsinchu event. "TSMC is our strategic partner. There's no question about that."　　Even so, MediaTek will continue to work with other fab partners, Rick Tsai said.　　Rick Tsai and M. K. Tsai, who are unrelated, will share the co-CEO role at MediaTek while M. K. Tsai concurrently serves as chairman.　　Recovery in Sight　　MediaTek aims to recover in the mobile business after losing market share to Qualcomm early this year. After years of gains against Qualcomm with handset customers in China, the Taiwanese company has slowed the pace in product upgrades this year, offering nothing better than a Cat 6 modem, while Qualcomm raised the bar with the 10nm 835 Snapdragon, including a Cat 16 modem.　　MediaTek will bring Cat 7 to the product mix later this year, followed by Cat 12 next year.　　The recovery of the mobile business is MediaTek's top priority, Chairman Tsai said.　　In the second half of this year the company's modem cost for the entry-level Helio P will improve significantly, the chairman said, expressing his hope that gross margin and market share will start to recover at that time.　　Still, a full recovery for MediaTek could take as many as two years, he said.　　New Boss　　Chairman Tsai dismissed rumors that he hired Rick Tsai to put out fires at MediaTek. The former CEO of TSMC is an asset who MediaTek would gladly bring on board under any circumstances, according to the chairman.　　Rick Tsai, for his part, demurred initially on the strengths he'll bring to the world's third-largest chip designer.　　"I don't really understand products," he said. "I am good at execution and also customer relations."　　Tsai also praised the work MediaTek has done with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning.

Key word：

MediaTek,TSM,7nm

Release time：2017-06-19 00:00 reading：1116 Continue reading>>

Q’comm Reportedly Taps TSMC's <span style='color:red'>7nm</span>

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Q’comm Reportedly Taps TSMC's 7nm

　　Qualcomm will switch back to TSMC to make its 7nm Snapdragon parts after giving its 10nm business to Samsung, according to a report in ET News, a South Korean publication. If correct, the switch will be a huge boost for TSMC and could cause a significant drop in Samsung’s foundry business in 2018.　　Qualcomm declined to comment on what a spokeswoman characterized as rumors. Samsung and TSMC did not reply to requests for comment.　　The report said Qualcomm started working on its 7nm Snapdragon SoC using TSMC tools in the middle of 2016. It is expected to announce the chip late this year or early next year “after first test wafer is manufactured from TSMC in September and after it is done with designing [its] package and verification process,” the report said.　　Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 835 made in Samsung’s 10nm process at CES in January. The article estimated the Snapdragon 835 business represents about $1.78 billion or 40 percent of Samsung’s foundry revenue.　　The article suggested Qualcomm is making the switch for two reasons. Samsung is late with its 7nm node, and the Korean giant lacks the chip-stacking technology TSMC is using in Apple’s current iPhone 7 handset SoCs. TSMC released its first 7nm process design kit late last year while Samsung’s first beta 7nm PDK is due in July, it said.　　Initially Samsung said in late 2016 it would use extreme ultraviolet lithography at 7nm. However those systems now are currently expected to take until 2019 to be ready for limited commercial use, according to Globalfoundries and others. More recently, Samsung announced plans for an 8nm node using immersion steppers.　　“TSMC is ahead of Samsung in being in risk production at 7nm. Samsung spent more time developing EUV for 7nm,” said Mike Demler, an analyst for the Linley Group.　　In addition, TSMC uses InFo, a fan-out wafer-level packaging technique with Apple’s smartphone SoCs. Samsung is working on similar technology but it is not expected to be ready for at least a year, the article said.　　Samsung will make its next-generation smartphone SoCs in the 8nm process. A separate SoC for its premium Galaxy Note line will be made in Samsung’s 7nm node, the article added.　　Apple initially made all its iPhone SoCs at Samsung despite an epic patent battle between the companies. Over the last few generations it tested and ultimately moved all that foundry business to TSMC.

Key word：

Q’comm,Qualcomm

Release time：2017-06-14 00:00 reading：1115 Continue reading>>

model	brand	Quote
MC33074DR2G	onsemi
CDZVT2R20B	ROHM Semiconductor
TL431ACLPR	Texas Instruments
BD71847AMWV-E2	ROHM Semiconductor
RB751G-40T2R	ROHM Semiconductor

model	brand	To snap up
BP3621	ROHM Semiconductor
STM32F429IGT6	STMicroelectronics
TPS63050YFFR	Texas Instruments
ESR03EZPJ151	ROHM Semiconductor
BU33JA2MNVX-CTL	ROHM Semiconductor
IPZ40N04S5L4R8ATMA1	Infineon Technologies

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