Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
ARM Shows Off 10nm Chip
ARM’s collaboration with TSMC has finally born some fruit with the tapeout of a 10nm test chip to show off the company’s readiness for the new manufacturing process.
The new test chip contains ARM’s yet-to-be-announced “Artemis” CPU core which is named after a goddess who will turn you into deer and tear you apart with wild dogs if you ever see her. [The NDA must have been pretty tough on this chip.ed]
In fact things have been ticking along on this project for ages. ARM discloses that tapeout actually took place back in December last year and is expecting silicon to come back from the foundry in the following weeks.
ARM actually implemented a full four-core Artemis cluster on the test chip which should show vendors what is possible for their production designs. The test chip has a current generation Mali GPU implementation with 1 shader core to show vendors what they will get when they use ARM’s POP IP in conjunction with its GPU IP. There is also a range of other IP blocks and I/O interfaces that are used to validation of the new manufacturing process.
TSMC’s 10FF manufacturing process is supposed to increase density with scaling’s of up to 2.1x compared to the previous 16nm manufacturing node. It also brings about 11-12 per cent higher performance at each process’ respective nominal voltage, or a 30 per cent reduction in power.
ARM siad that comparing a current Cortex A72 design on 16FF+ and an Artemis core on 10FF on the new CPU and process can halve the dynamic power consumption. Currently clock frequencies on the new design are still behind the older more mature process and IP, but ARM expects this to improve as it optimizes its POP and the process stabilizes.
Courtesy-Fud
TSMC’s FinFet Coming In 2015?
TSMC has announced that it will begin volume production of 16nm FinFET products in the second half of 2015, in late Q2 or early Q3.
For consumers, this means products based on TSMC 16nm FinFET silicon should appear in late 2015 and early 2016. The first TSMC 16nm FinFET product was announced a few weeks ago.
TSMC executive CC Wei said sales of 16nm FinFET products should account for 7-9% of the foundry’s total revenue in Q4 2015. The company already has more than 60 clients lined up for the new process and it expects 16nm FinFET to be its fastest growing process ever.
Although TSMC is not talking about the actual clients, we already know the roster looks like the who’s who of tech, with Qualcomm, AMD, Nvidia and Apple on board.
This also means the 20nm node will have a limited shelf life. The first 20nm products are rolling out as we speak, but the transition is slow and if TSMC sticks to its schedule, 20nm will be its top node for roughly a year, giving it much less time on top than earlier 28nm and 40nm nodes.
The road to 10nm
TSMC’s 16nm FinFET, or 16FinFET, is just part of the story. The company hopes to tape out the first 10nm products in 2015, but there is no clear timeframe yet.
Volume production of 10nm products is slated for 2016, most likely late 2016. As transitions speed up, TSMC capex will go up. The company expects to invest more than $10bn in 2015, up from $9.6bn this year.
TSMC expects global smartphone shipments to reach 1.5bn units next year, up 19 percent year-on-year. Needless to say, TSMC silicon will power the majority of them.
Twitter To Allow Monet Tweets
October 22, 2014 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Twitter To Allow Monet Tweets
One of France’s largest banks is partnering with social network Twitter Inc. to allow its customers to transfer money via tweets.
The move by Groupe BPCE, France’s second largest bank by customers, coincides with Twitter’s own foray into the world of online payments as the social network seeks new sources of revenue beyond advertising.
Twitter is racing other tech giants Apple and Facebook to get a foothold in new payment services for mobile phones or apps. They are collaborating and, in some cases, competing with banks and credit card issuers that have run the business for decades.
The bank said last month it was prepared to offer simple person-to-person money transfers via Twitter to French consumers, regardless of what bank they use, and without requiring the sender know the recipient’s banking details.
“(S-Money) offers Twitter users in France a new way to send each other money, irrespective of their bank and without having to enter the beneficiary’s bank details, with a simple tweet,” Nicolas Chatillon, chief executive of S-Money, BPCE’s mobile payments unit, said in the statement.
Payment by tweets will be managed via the bank’s S-Money service, which allows money transfers via text message and relies on the credit-card industry’s data security standards.
BPCE and Twitter declined to provide further details ahead of a news conference in Paris later today to unveil the service.
Last month, Twitter started trials of its own new service, dubbed “Twitter Buy”, to allow consumers to find and buy products on its social network.
The service embeds a “Twitter Buy” button inside tweets posted by more than two dozen stores, music artists and non-profits. Burberry, Home Depot, and musicians such as Pharrell and Megadeth are among the early vendors.
Twitter’s role to date has been to connect customers rather than processing payments or checking their identities.
TSMC And Imagination Team Up
TSMC and Imagination Technologies announced the next step in their tech collaboration in an effort to develop Imagination’s next generation PowerVR 6-series GPUs.
The new GPUs are still not ready for prime time, but they should be used in future SoC designs, including those stamped out using TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process. The two companies will work to create new reference system designs, utilizing high bandwidth memory standards and TSMC’s 3D IC technology.
As GPU muscle becomes more important for next generation SoCs, designers need more advanced and more complex processes, such as TSMC’s 16FinFET.
“Through advanced projects initiated under this partnership, Imagination and TSMC are working together to showcase how SoCs will transform the future of mobile and embedded products,” said Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination.
TSMC VP Cliff Hou argued that the need for high performance mobile GPUs will drive silicon processes in the future, much in the same way CPU development pushed new processes in the nineties.
Samsung Goes Star-ups
Samsung will put $1.1 billion towards venture capital funding of semiconductor firms.
The company said that it will commit the research and development funding through its Samsung Venture Americas branch and Catalyst Fund investment operations, according to multiple reports.
The investment is set to target semiconductor design and manufacturing. The company will look to fund startups that can assist its hardware units and will open a new R&D facility in Silicon Valley.
The announcement comes as Samsung is seeing its revenues hit record levels. The company reported quarterly profits of 7.5 billion to close out 2012 and sales from Samsung’s handset unit reached record levels.
Analysts believe that the company now controls nearly 23 percent of the smartphone market. The jump in hardware sales has brought with it a healthy appetite for components. Earlier this month Samsung passed Apple to become the world’s largest single user of semiconductor chips.
Samsung has recently stepped up its investment activities, with the firm buying storage vendor Nvelo and last week buying a small stake in Wacom, best known for its touchpad and stylus input technology. With the firm looking to invest in startups, it is perhaps looking to follow in Apple’s footsteps, which kickstarted its chip design efforts by buying PA Semiconductor and later Intrinsity, and invested in Imagination Technologies.
TSMC 20nm Processors In High Demand
TSMC believes demand for next-generation 20nm chips will be even higher than demand for current 28nm products.
Speaking in a conference call, TSMC CEO Morris Chang said the volume of 20nm SoCs built next year will be greater than 28nm volume in 2012 and by 2015 it should be greater than 28nm volume in 2013.
TSMC hopes to start 20nm production in the latter part of the year. The company is constructing two new facilities at Fab 15 and it hopes to start 20nm production in both simultaneously. We could be in for a quick ramp.
TSMC will offer only one version of the 20nm process, compared to four versions of the 28nm process. This should also allow it to ramp up volume production faster, reckons Xbit Labs.
TSMC To Boost 28nm Production
TSMC is able to make chips using 28nm process technology at a speedier pace that it originally anticipated. This means that the chipmaker will likely be able to meet demand for existing orders and start accepting new designs.
TSMC promised to increase its 28nm capacity to 68 thousand 300mm wafers per month by the end of the year. It did this by ramping up fab 15/phase 2 to 50,000 300mm wafers a month. According to the Taiwan Economic News it looks like the outfit managed to beat its own projections, which should be good news for customers like AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm. Well not AMD of course. It just told Globalfoundries to stop making so many of its chips so it can save a bit of money.
But it looks like TSMC is flat out. In November the fab 15/phase 2 processed 52,000 wafers. When combined with fab 15/phase 1, TSMC should be able to process 75 – 80, 000 300mm wafers using 28nm process technologies this month. TSMC produces the majority of 28nm chips at fab 15, which will have capacity of more than 100,000 300mm wafers per month when fully operational.
Oracle And Nokia Make A Deal
October 10, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Oracle And Nokia Make A Deal
Nokia Oyj has agreed to grant Oracle Corp’s customers access to its mapping products, as the wireless phone company attempts to expand its location services business.
The Finnish company, which bought the world’s largest digital mapping firm, Navteq, in 2008, has been looking for ways to boost the business
and recently signed mapping deals with Groupon Inc and Amazon.Com Inc.
In stark contrast with Nokia’s troubled mobile phone operation, sales at the location business grew last quarter, though it still generates only 4 percent of group revenue.
Oracle has developed a link between its own software and the Nokia Location Platform software, Nokia said on Monday. This enables the U.S. company’s business users to access the mapping services through its products.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Nokia said Oracle users would license Location Platform from Nokia for use in Oracle applications.
“Nokia has been on a mission for the last 18 months to sign mapping and location deals with large internet players. The deal with Oracle extends this,” CCS Insight analyst Martin Garner said.
Last week Apple publicly apologized after customer complaints about errors in its maps, which have been put on its latest phone operating system instead of Google Inc’s mapping service.
TSMC Makes Expansion Plans
TSMC is expected to spend $10 billion next year in capital works as Apple plans to contract the outfit to build its next-generation processors.
According to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News TSMC has informed the equipment suppliers of its decision to hike capital expenditure for 2013 to US$10 billion. This indicates that TSMC has overcome technical problem with 20nm process, which Apple’s next-generation processors are said to use.
It also suggests that Jobs’ Mob is speeding up its reduction of work it gives Samsung. Apple has reportedly sent around 200 design engineers to help TSMC get familiar with the company’s next-generation processor designs at TSMC’s facility in Central Taiwan Science Park.
Good Technology Updates Security
July 25, 2012 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
Comments Off on Good Technology Updates Security
Good Technology today announced two updates to its mobile security software products across IOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.
Powering mobile security for major enterprises such as Barclays, Sainsbury’s and LOCOG, Good Technology claims the releases are the first of a kind for the industry and address security threats linked to the bring your own device (BYOD) procedures being used in most big companies.
The first update announced by the firm is the addition of what it calls “Appkinetics” to its Good Dynamics line, which aims to solve the problem of secure private corporate data leakage.
“Good’s patented AppKinetics technology builds on the company’s proven ‘containerization’ security model to enable business apps from Good, its Good Dynamics partner independent software vendors (ISV), and internal enterprise developers,” the firm said in a statement.
“This is to securely exchange information within and between applications and create seamless multi-app workflows without compromising security or employees’ privacy and personal experience.”
The firm’s second update is the addition of eight new partnered apps to its Good Dynamics ecosystem covering the areas of business intelligence, collaboration, document editing, document printing, file storage/content management, remote desktop management and mobile application development platforms (MADPs).
This update allows developers to integrate the Good Dynamics technology into apps so that companies can create secure end-to-end workflows of protected, mobile applications to drive business processes.
Good Technology’s EMEA GM Andy Jacques explained, “If you download the standard consumer document editing application you can copy and paste from that from that app into another app.”
He continued, “If you were to open a piece of corporate mission critical data you can copy and paste that and put it onto Hotmail for example.”