No, it's a 2.1x density improvement in going from 16FF -> 10nm at TSMC, hardly minor.
What TSMC is doing at 7nm sounds lot like what Intel is doing at 10nm.
Still seems like 10 nm is just a minor density improvement for both foundries. What they are calling 7 nm now is the one that is comparable to Intel's 14 nm in terms of density.
Still seems like 10 nm is just a minor density improvement for both foundries. What they are calling 7 nm now is the one that is comparable to Intel's 14 nm in terms of density.
No, it's a 2.1x density improvement in going from 16FF -> 10nm at TSMC, hardly minor.
What TSMC is doing at 7nm sounds lot like what Intel is doing at 10nm.
yeah :thumbsup: For the first time TSMC will also have a High performance variant of their 7nm process for HPC applications.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329217&page_number=2
"At 7nm, the foundry will support different variants of the node for mobile, high performance computing (HPC), IoT and automotive chips. The move marks the most differentiation the foundry has ever attempted with a single process, reflecting the increasing diversity of semiconductor requirements.
Over the last few years mobile was the major driver, so we put a comprehensive ecosystem for mobile in place,” said TSMC’s Hou. “Looking forward, it’s not only about mobile but HPC, automotive and IoT, and their design needs are very different,” he said.
The 7nm platforms will have their own development kits, EDA tools and IP blocks. In addition, companies such as ARM and Imagination Technologies will provide IP reference subsystems and optimized processors to speed SoC integration and verification, said Hou.
The HPC variant will make chips that run 10-15% faster than those made in the mobile process, enabling clock trees optimized to hit 4 GHz data rates. The variant will include optimized SRAM compilers supporting L3 caches and taller standard cell libraries. Early versions of the tools and IP blocks will be available later this year."
So Intel 10nm and TSMC 7nm are of roughly equal transistor density.
Wrong. TSMC 10nm brings a 2.1x density increase wrt TSMC 16FF+ . TSMC 7nm brings a 1.63x density increase wrt TSMC 10nm.
Intel's about a year ahead, since we will probably see 10nm volume from in in Q3 2017, with big volume from TSMC 7nm arriving in 2H 2018 (iPhone 8).
It would seem TSMC/ARM have some customers who are serious about going after Intel in servers/HPC.
No, it's a 2.1x density improvement in going from 16FF -> 10nm at TSMC, hardly minor.
TSMC 16FF+ - 90 x 70 = 6300
Intel 14nm - 70 x 52 = 3640
TSMC 10nm - 6300 /2.1 = 3000
TSMC 7nm - 3000/1.63 = 1840
Intel 10nm - 3640 / 2 = 1820 (assuming Intel 10nm has 2x density of Intel 14nm)
So Intel 10nm and TSMC 7nm are of roughly equal transistor density.
LOL, I guess it's the first time that you have more pessimistic numbers for TSMC than I. Even more surprising is that your numbers are higher (worse) even though I have NOT given TSMC a 2.1x scaling for 10nm, because that is absolutely false. TSMC claims something like 0.52x.
Intel 22nm = 7200
TSMC 16nm+ = 80 * 64 = 5120
Samsung 14nm = 4992
Intel 14nm = 70 * 52 = 3640
Samsung 10nm = 3145F
TSMC 10nm = 2662F
Intel 10nm = 1856F
TSMC 7nm = 1517F
Intel 22nm = 0.108µm² / 0.092µm² (high density)
TSMC 16nm = 0.07µm² (high density)
Samsung 14nm = 0.080µm² / 0.064µm² (high density)
Intel 14nm = 0.0588µm² / 0.0500µm²
Samsung 10nm = 0.049µm² / 0.040µm²
TSMC 10nm = 0,0364µm²F (high density)
Intel 10nm = 0.0312µm²F / 0,0272µm²F
TSMC 7nm = 0.0207µm²F (high density / -43%)