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Samsung Reaches Milestone For 14nm Technology
An anonymous reader writes "Samsung announced a milestone on its development of 14nm manufacturing semiconductors, claiming that it offers major advantages to system-on-chip devices using in consumer electronic products (especially lower power). They recently taped out a Cortex-A7 processor with this technology, calling it a significant milestone for the fabless ecosystem."
What is fabless ecosystem?
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Apple should sue them for "method and apparatus" to make something smaller.
THL phish sticks
These are ARM based chips and they are completely dominating, if Intel had 30 years of advanced technology they wouldn't be so far behind on the low powered chip side of things.
Umm, no. They had a hell of a time moving to 22nm and getting volume production up, pretty much your entire post is just paranoid delusion.
Intel just has more money to throw at the problems, and they've managed to get a lead of a few years on the other companies. They only maintain that lead because they keep pushing forward.
The problem is that makes it harder for everybody else to compete, but that's not really Intel's fault.
They recently taped out a Cortex-A7 processor with this technology, calling it a significant milestone for the fabless ecosystem."
I'm very good at the English language but I have no idea what this means. How do you 'tape out' a processor? What's a 'fabless ecosystem'? (The rainforests are rather wonderful, I hear.)
ARM is cheaper and that's why intel is screwed
Few computing tasks need the power of an I core CPU
To be honest, I tried to sum up some outrage over your statement... but I just couldn't.
If Intel really is THAT good that they can coast through life and still beat their competition in technological advancements... then fine.
Eventually, if your theory is right, someone will come along (maybe even ex-Intel engineers) and beat them. It is already happening in other sectors.
THL phish sticks
Mod post ignorant. If that were true, AMD wouldnt have been so far superior to Intel back in the P4 / Pentium D days.
Fact is it takes about 3-5 years for this tech to be fully realized, and Intel is currently (AFAIK) the only one with solid 22nm production simply because their R&D budget is huge. If you find that scary or whatever you can send your dollars to AMD to help them get up to speed.
Well, looks like the copying boosted innovation after all! Apple invented "methods and apparatus of rubbing stuff" that's nothing. At most they created concepts, copying is good, and all this new protection on "inventions" is just slowing us down.
they would be right where they are now, minus a small percentage. Samsung have been on a rocket ride straight up long before Apple recovered from the gutter, Unlike Apple they have a wide range of profit products, they make their money from their Electronics, panel and memory parts sales to many other companies including Sony, Apple, Dell etc etc.
Tape-out means Samsung has got a design that they think might work but hasn't actually been fabbed. Intel has had WORKI(NG 14nm microprocessors (in the lab, not in production) since mid 2012. It will be mid 2013 before Samsung has that. Intel will be in production by then. (Production starts some months before retail shipments since they have to build up inventory, get parts to integrators, etc.) Intel's lead seems to be about where it was before, not getting larger but isn't clearly getting smaller.
That only holds until Intel started strong-arming the board and boxmakers not to build K7 systems.
That was EVIL, Intel was convicted, and they didn't get a fraction of the punishment they deserved.
Depends on your cost metric. They're only cheaper if you don't consider cost per computation/second.
One could think that this announcement of 14nm development is Samsung one-upping their competition.
Another interpretation is that companies need to exercise "continuous disclosure" in order to be taken seriously in the share markets and not fall foul of the market regulators which insist that companies reveal important information as soon as is practicable so that investors and possible investors get a true picture of the company's market worth. In most cases, a good-news story is a great way to have the market clamouring to invest, and so assists the company to raise the capital needed to get its developments to market.
It also does not hurt to rub the nose of the opposition.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
When your dealing in tablets and smartphones that metric is irrelevant, Power consumption and total cost of chip are far more important than computation cost per second.
That only holds until Intel started strong-arming the board and boxmakers not to build K7 systems.
I see what you did there...
They are using all the right Apple-ly terms. Low power, fabless, ecosystem, etc.
Claiming that the invented the 14nm process and provided images of Steve Job's genitalia as evidence
apple has never fabbed a chip in the entire history of the company, nor would they even begin to know how to, fucktard
you know AMD is only 10 months younger than intel right? or that Acron computers, where the ARM guys came from has been developing their cpu since the 1980's?
cause you make it sound like they just popped up out of nowhere yesterday, or maybe that's just your uninformed tinfoil hat conspiracy that intel, 2pac and sea lab are really ruling the world.
Yes it probably my own uninformed tinfoil hat conspiracy but I'm glad the kind folk of Slashdot are willing to debunk it for me
on Apple's patents on "making something", "thinking about making something", and "dropping acid to free your mind to think about making something"?
yea cause samsung ONLY makes those 2 products dont they
sounds like the fanboi's are especially but hurt on this one, never-mind apple couldn't fab a cardboard box without 4 outside contractors and a external design studio
Samsung fanbois here are also Steve Jobs fans, since he led the revolution they're all trying to claim now for themselves
no, there is no such "30 years worth" stockpile. Intel doesn't have the most advanced results in chip R&D either, IBM and other are way ahead
The whole "they'll sue you for this and that" thing is getting really fucking old.
You are right - Apple should seriously stop being a patent troll and slow down with the lawsuits. Although, I'm sure Darl McBride would be proud.
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It's not like Intel had any extra gears to put in when AMD was spanking their ass some years back, they had a process lead and sustained that lead even as AMD was putting out much better CPU designs but no more than that. But the CPU business has been very much so that the one who invests more, earns more and then has more to invest more again and Intel has simply beat AMD by spreading the costs of R&D across more chips. For a while AMD beat it by developing a better design on a lower budget while Intel floundered but in the end economics of scale won out.
This is not just Intel, the number of semiconductor players has been shrinking drastically with processor size and that trend is only going to continue, five out of the top six biggest semiconductor companies increased their market share last year. More and more go with foundries and the foundries are getting fewer and bigger too. Now ARM chips might not be the most powerful chips in the world, but they make billions of them so their processing technology is pretty good. They're going to give Intel a good run for their money, it's certainly no walkover.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Watt consumption are guys talking about?
My kids have iPods and an iPhone and a Macbook Air lying around the house. Not my cup of tea personally. And yes - Apple sues too much over stupid (and increasingly invalidated) patents. And yes, it reminds me of SCO's business strategy, and its a really really bad business strategy.
In the 80's someone once said.
No one will ever need more than 1GB of memory....
Actually, that's wrong. Since ARM chips are so much cheaper, that you get a *lot* more bang for the buck. Including energy usage buck.
you're right that few computing tasks need the power of an I core until you start looking into the performance and do what I'm planning. My next build revolves around an E3-1245v2 Xeon that will be underclocked to around 10 percent. Should meet my current performance (x2-240) for less then 15 watts. Right now, I'm projecting a total of 60w for the CPU/GPU/SSD/3x 2TB Drives. This system will be run off a solar power system (off-grid home) and used as the Gaming/Media Center
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Then our SSDs will survive a whole SEVEN program/erase cycles.
In the 80's someone once said.
No one will ever need more than 1GB of memory....
I think you will find that was 1 megabyte. - the original IBM PC could only address 640KB.
1GB would have been unthinkable until a few years ago. I can remember being massively impressed by a 64MB machine in the mid '90s.
"Intel probably have the processors that are 'coming out' in 2017 already laying on a shelf in a warehouse somewhere by the millions."
In the off chance you meant this literally, no. It would be extremely stupid to stock up real hardware that far ahead. I do suspect however that Intel has the technology already in the labs, which I suppose is what they base their so-called "roadmaps" on. The future is already here, it just hasn't been stress-tested yet.
In last news we had on the topic, Intel was at 22 nm.
It's Koren for fabulous ecosystem.
To be honest, I tried to sum up some outrage over your statement
(emphasis added)
It's "summon" up. Unless you intend to do arithmetic, the word is "summon".
Off topic and sarcastic as it may be, I always thought that boat is so ugly, finally they realized it's not worth all those dollars http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yacht/index.html
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I beg to differ.
I'd rather pay 200 bucks for a processor that actually gets stuff done, than pay 25 for one that tends to work well with very specific stuff. And let's not even go into energy efficiency.
FTFA (I know..)
I suspect that means things will begin to move more quickly for their other partners as well. A whole lot of fabless companies use designs from these people.
They have been catching up quite quickly. Most of their issues are not in manufacturing but in chip design. They simply did not have in-house designs for all the additional functionality you can find on your average ARM SoC. They also did not have any low power CPU designs which they could manufacture. Their solution was quite simple: you pick up a 1990s Pentium processor design and port it to a modern manufacturing process. The result was a chip with more performance and about the same power consumption as the top notch ARM CPU core designs.
Will this 14nm chip last longer than their current chip in Galaxy S3 - the exynos ? give or take 14 weeks?
I'm sorry but Samsung quality has gone down the hill. Their product has plenty of bugs - both hardware and software.
I've got an Acron box within 3 feet if me (oh, sorry - my last day in the office was Friday).
Regardless - they were sweet little things.
catching up fast definitely, 30 years ahead of everyone else is utter bullshit dribbling out of the OP's mouth.