Samsung Announces 14nm FinFET for Exynos 7
by Joshua Ho on February 16, 2015 4:04 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Tablets
- SoCs
While we've known about the existence of the Exynos 7420 for a while now, we didn't really know what to expect until recently. Today, it seems that Samsung is ready to start disclosing at least a few details about an upcoming Exynos 7 SoC, which is likely to be the Exynos 7420.
At a high level Exynos 7 will have four Cortex A57s clocked at 2.1 GHz, in addition to four Cortex A53s along with an LPDDR4-capable memory interface. According to Samsung Tomorrow, we can expect a 20% increase to device performance, which is likely a reference to clock speed, and 35% lower power consumption. In addition, there is a reference to a 30% productivity gain, which is likely to be referencing performance per watt. Samsung claims that these figures come from a comparison to their 20nm HKMG process, which we've examined before with the Exynos 5433 in the Note 4 Exynos review.
Although there is no direct statement of which version of 14nm is used for this upcoming Exynos 7 Octa, judging by how this is the first 14nm IC to come from Samsung it's likely that this SoC will use 14LPE, which focuses on reducing leakage and power consumption rather than switching speed.
Source: Samsung Tomorrow
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levizx - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
That's plain stupid. What does parallelism have anything to do with ISA? As a matter of fact RISC is the one with OoO superscalar capabilities early on. Intel x86 had to go (internal) RISC just to compete.III-V - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Congratulations, you have fallen victim to Samsung's and TSMC's marketing.Process node names have no relation to physical dimensions, and are purely marketing names. Here's a good article to inform you of the matter:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/th...
Intel does in fact have a process advantage. Their transistor performance is a good 3 years ahead of their competition, and they're significantly denser.
PC Perv - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Total hearsay and unverifiable assertion. And you talk as if Intel's 14nm (or 22nm, 32nm, 45nm,...) had any meaning other than marketing.. haha.patrickjp93 - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
not speculation. Undeniable fact: Intel is massively ahead at 14nm. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3884-who-wi...levizx - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
And 14nm is THE ONLY one Intel had a "lead" then. Intel's 22/32/45nm are all LIES by the same standard from your undeniable fact.Jon Tseng - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
It's complicated but essentially Samsung 14nm FF is actually 20nm FF (underlying interconnect still at 20nm). So this means its basically somewhere between Intel 22nm FF (2012) and 14nm FF (late-2014), although perhaps skewed a bit closer towards to the former.However you also need to factor in that Intel's SoC process (used for mobile) lags its main CPU process by 6-12 months so 14nm hits SoC middle for 2015 with Cherry Trail.
So depending on how you cut it Intel can still have anything from a 3 year (14FF vs. Ivy Bridge to a 0 year lead (14FF vs. Cherry Trail). All sort of subjective really!
smilingcrow - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Cherry Trail is already shipping to OEMs so they do still have a lead there on actual shipping products plus with a denser chip.It's hard to make direct comparisons but overall Intel's lead seems to have slipped somewhat.
smilingcrow - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/intel-begin...name99 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
And for all we know A9s are already shipping to Apple... (Apple has to build up MASSIVE inventory to hit their September launches without too much product shortage.)That's the problem with "shipping to OEMs" --- it doesn't actually mean anything.
*Selling* (as in I can order it on Amazon and get it shipped) is a little more meaningful but still not great. God knows there've been more than a few "selling" products where the yield appears to be one device per day.
Speedfriend - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
A9 is certainly not shipping to Apple yet. It only ships the quarter before launch of the phone as you could see in TSMC's numbers last year. Samsung only likely to hit Apple size production by end of Q2.