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ARM Announces Next-Gen 64-Bit Artemis Mobile Chip On 10nm TSMC FinFET Process (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes from a report via Hot Hardware: ARM has been working closely with TSMC for years now. Over the last six years or so especially, ARM and TSMC have collaborated to ensure that TSMC's cutting-edge process technologies work well with ARM's processor IP. However recently, ARM just announced the successful tape-out of a test chip featuring next-generation, 64-Bit ARM v8-A mobile processor cores, codenamed Artemis, manufactured using TSMC's upcoming 10nm FinFET process technology. The test chip features what ARM calls an Artemis cluster. It's essentially a quad-core processor with power management IP, a single-shader Mali graphics core, AMBA AXI interconnect, and test ROMs connected to a second cluster by an asynchronous bridge that features the memory subsystem, which is stacked with a Cortex M core that handles control logic, some timers, SRAM, and external IO. Compared to 16nm FinFET+, at nominal voltage, the 10nm test chip offered a 12% performance improvement in a similar power envelope. In super-overdrive mode (Vsod), the Artemis test chip offered similar performance, but at 30% lower power.SoCs for premium mobile devices with next-generation cores produced on the 10nm process node are expected to arrive later in the second half of this year.
This happens every process node.
Just before intel starts shipping volume on a production ready process, someone else announces their process that's at the same pitch to give the impression of being 'almost caught up' when they aren't even close.
Don't think that 10nm TSMC is the same thing as 10nm Intel either. In node naming, nanometers are a marketing term.
Not to mention all reports so far put Zen at least 40% faster than their fastest Vishera chips, that puts it squarely in Ivy Bridge territory if not better which if they keep their prices close to what they are now? We're talking 8 cores/16 threads for less than $300, those are gonna sell like hotcakes.
As for TFA? Honestly I don't think its gonna help ARM much at all, and here is why...dark silicon. With phones and tablets being made so thin frankly your average ARM chip can't really even stretch their legs now because it would cause battery life to be measured in minutes and any power gains they get by going to the smaller process? The OEMs will just fuck them out of by making the devices thinner and the batteries smaller, hamstringing the chips yet again. We probably won't get to see what these chips can actually do until they start getting put in those "Android desktops" you see coming out of China and since those usually stay one or two chips behind? It'll probably be awhile.
Its a shame really, as I'm sure there are a lot of guys just like me that would be happy to tell the OEMs to stick their ultra thin designs in return for more battery and better heat dissipation so we could get the most of these quad and octocore ARM chips but as long as the OEMs are all trying to copy iCrap? Its just not gonna happen.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.