Tag Archives: 7nm

Samsung has begun preparing itself for the incoming wave of demand for 10nm chips. Today, the company announced that its Foundries have commenced mass production of system-on-chip (SoC) products built using Samsung's second generation 10nm FinFET process, known as 10LPP (Low Power Plus). The new 10LPP process allows up to …

We heard back in May that AMD was already preparing for the jump to 7nm CPUs in time for ‘Zen 2' and ‘Zen 3' some time in the next few years but it seems that the company is beginning to open up about the difficulties getting there. In an interview …

GlobalFoundries has today announced that it will soon be open for business as far as 7nm FinFET is concerned. GF's jump to 7nm (7LP) FinFET semiconductor technology delivers a 40 percent generational performance boost to meet the demands of cloud servers, networking infrastructure and mobile processors. Design kits are available …

This evening, AMD held a conference call to follow up and provide additional clarification to some of the announcements it made during the Financial Analyst meeting on Tuesday this week. During that event, AMD unveiled the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, alongside its forthcoming Threadripper and EPYC processors. However, GPU and …

This week, Intel has announced its plans to invest $7 billion into its Fab 42 semiconductor factory in the US as it gears up to start working on 7 nanometer technology. Work first began on the Fab 42 factory back in 2011 but construction was paused in 2014. However, with …

While Intel is gearing up to launch its first 10nm processors in the second half of next year, Globalfoundries has decided to go in a different direction, skipping the 10nm entirely and instead choosing to focus on 7nm FinFET production instead. Globalfoundries explained its reasoning behind this in a statement, …

GlobalFoundries is working on its own 7nm and 10nm fabrication processes and it does not look like the company has plans to license technologies from the outside. The contract maker of semiconductors hopes that specialists from IBM’s microelectronics unit will help it to design world-class leading-edge manufacturing processes. GlobalFoundries, which …

For quite a while, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has been talking about using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for its advanced 10nm process technology. However, since appropriate scanners are not ready and will not be for at least a couple of years, the company will be unable to take advantage of …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week disclosed some additional details about its 7nm fabrication process. TSMC reiterated plans to start qualifications of the technology in early 2017 and then initiate volume production in 2018. The 7nm process will use certain elements derived from the 10nm fabrication process, which will help …

Intel Corp. has implied a number of times that it did not need to use extreme ultraviolet lithography for its 7nm manufacturing process. However, after facing problems with multi-patterning methods at 14nm and 10nm fabrication technologies, it seems that the company has changed its mind. This week Intel said that …

Intel Corp. on Wednesday confirmed the delay of mass production of central processing units using 10nm fabrication process to 2017. The company said that it ran into difficulties with its 10nm technology and decided to stretch the life-cycle of 14nm process with one more family of CPU products code-named “Kaby …

Intel Corp.’s “Kaby Lake” central processing units will be released exactly a year after the company’s “Skylake” chips due this August and September. The introduction of chips in late third quarter means that the company will further postpone the roll-out of microprocessors made using 10nm fabrication process. As reported, Intel’s …

Intel Corp. has again delayed installation of equipment necessary to produce semiconductors in high volume using 10nm process technology. It is believed that Intel experiences yield ramp issues, just like in case of its 14nm manufacturing tech, which is why it does not make sense for the company to buy …

Intel Corp. will likely start making central processing units using 10nm fabrication process next year, but the company is already hard at work developing an even more advanced process technology. According to Intel, it already knows well how to produce chips at 7nm node. “After 10nm, comes 7nm [manufacturing technology] …

Intel Corp. has been particularly tight-lipped about its roadmap concerning microprocessors to be made using 10nm fabrication process. However, on Friday the company said that development of the 10nm technology is progressing well and it will share more information about products it plans to produce using the process later this year. …

Samsung Electronics plans to invest additional $9.2 billion in capacity expansion of the world’s largest semiconductor fab, a media report claims. At present it is unclear how exactly Samsung plans to expand its fab, but the cost of the whole project – around $23.6 billion – already looks staggering. Samsung …

ASML Holding NV, one of the world’s leading makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, this week said that it had signed an agreement with one of its major U.S.-based customers to deliver at least 15 ASML extreme ultraviolet (EUV) EUV lithography systems. Given the scale of the order it is highly likely …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. remains optimistic about its abilities to make chips using thinner process technologies going forward. Last week the company said that it would start risk production of integrated circuits using its 7nm process technology in 2017. Mass production of commercial 7nm products will likely begin in 2018, …

It is not a secret that transitions to newer chip manufacturing processes are getting more difficult from financial capital standpoint since not only research and development costs more than before, but also production equipment is getting more expensive. In a bid to keep their prices at current levels, semiconductor companies need …

Intel Corp. predicts that Moore’s law will last for at least another decade and the number of transistors per chip will keep doubling every two years. While there are challenges ahead, Intel’s engineers are going to solve them. Later this month Moore’s law will hit 50 years, an unprecedented date for the …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week confirmed that it has a team of engineers working on a manufacturing process that will succeed 10nm fabrication technology towards the end of the decade. While the company did not reveal details about its sub-10nm process, it said that it considers various options for …

Kinam Kim, the president of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, presented his view on the development of chip manufacturing technologies at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2015 this week. Samsung is already developing its next-generation 10nm FinFET fabrication process, but in order to continue scaling down structures of chips, new materials …

The semiconductor industry has realized the benefits of Moore’s Law for 50 years, making chips that have grown from tens to billions of transistors and performing an increased range of functions from memory to logic to signal processing. Next year or in 2017, the world’s largest maker of microprocessors will …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has announced that it will invest NT$500 billion ($15.9 billion) in expansion of its manufacturing capacities in central Taiwan. The company did not outline details of the upgrade plan, but it looks like the company is getting ready to significantly increase its abilities to produce semiconductors …

We do not know exactly when companies like Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. make their first chips using 7nm, 5nm, 3nm or 2nm process technologies. But we do know what should happen before leading semiconductor producers manufacture their new chips using ultra-thin process technologies: ASML should sell …

Although Intel Corp. imagines its future many years down the road and has a solid vision, it admits that going forward it will be much harder to achieve certain goals as manufacturing technologies get much more complex. Like other huge companies, Intel Corp. has big plans for the future. Recently …

The onerous march of Intel's roadmap is the kind of thing you can set a very slow watch by. While it might make the occasional defensive move against a launch by AMD, in general Intel is used to marching to the beat of its own, metronomic, beat. In pushing too …

Intel is in the business of not only making the impossible, possible – it also spends billions in productising its inventions and bringing them to market. Right now, the chip-giant is preparing for the launch of Sandy Bridge E for X79. From the brainstorming drawing board, to sitting in a …

KitGuru has long been fascinated with the increased levels of parallelism in modern processors. The move to Core, showed the world that doing more work per cycle is usually much more powerful than simply cranking up the clock. Intel's research teams rapidly embraced this increased parallelism and now we're moving …

While the whole world plus dog is still looking at the ripples made by the Sandy Bridge recall, Intel is jogging on at a tremendous rate of knots. KitGuru dons a bee-keeper suit and enters the FAB-u-lous world of CPU technology. In January, everyone's jaw dropped as Intel asked the …