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Samsung may already have its 8-core Exynos 5 Octa offering, but the cunning “big.LITTLE” implementation means only up to four cores work together at any time — either the Cortex-A15 quartet or its lesser Cortex-A7 counterpart. In other words, we’d rather rename the chipset range to something like “Exynos 5 Quad Dual.” But according to recent intel coming from Taipei and Shenzhen, it looks like Taiwan’s MediaTek is well on its way to ship a true 8-core mobile chipset in Q4 this year.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile

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Source: Sina Weibo (login required), UDN (1), (2)

At yesterday’s investor meeting in Taipei, TSMC’s chairman and CEO Morris Chang shared the good news that his company’s 28nm chip shipment this year will triple that of last year, which should boost its annual increase in revenue to above the industry’s average rate of seven percent. China Times reports that orders for TSMC’s 28nm silicon are lined up to as far out as late Q3, courtesy of demand for ARM processors, baseband chips, graphics processors and x86 processors. This is no surprise considering the likes of Qualcomm (Snapdragon 600 and 800), Huawei (HiSilicon K3V2 Pro and K3V3), NVIDIA (Tegra 4), AMD (Temash and Kabini) and possibly Apple will be ordering more 28nm-based chipsets from the foundry throughout the year. TSMC did struggle with its 28nm supply for Qualcomm early last year, but it eventually caught up later on, and Chang stated that TSMC now owns nearly 100 percent of the 28nm process market.

Looking further ahead, Chang said his company’s already seen enough clients and demand for the upcoming 20nm manufacturing process, which should have a more significant financial contribution in 2014. The exec also predicted that at TSMC, its 20nm production will see a bigger growth rate between 2014 and 2015 than its 28nm counterpart did between 2012 and 2013 — the former should eventually nab close to 90 percent of the market, said Chang.

[Image credit: TSMC]

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Via: The Next Web

Source: China Times (translated), MoneyDJ (translated)

As much as MediaTek is known for powering budget smartphones, the company is keen to make a fast track into the big leagues. Or bigger, at any rate. General manager Xie Qingjiang explains to China Times that MediaTek should have a quad-core, 28-nanometer mobile processor in production between the fall and the very start of 2013 — not bad for a firm that just introduced a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 design this summer. Smartphones built around the new part should arrive before the first quarter of 2013 is over. Details aren’t available for the processor in question, although it’s reasonable to say that MediaTek is more likely to serve a cost-conscious crowd than to compete in the lofty realms of the similarly 28nm Snapdragon S4 Pro. The move to quad-core could nonetheless be a welcome spike in performance for an audience that often has to settle for old technology.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

MediaTek plans for quad-core chips in budget smartphones by early 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 processors, built on a 28nm process, have proven so popular that TSMC has said that it’s struggling to manufacture the chips. Qualcomm has recognized that it needs to keep up with demand, and has signed an agreement with an unlikely partner: Samsung. The terms of the deal with Samsung haven’t been disclosed, but an additional partner, United Microelectronics, will begin making 28nm chips by the fourth quarter of this year.

Samsung currently produces its own Exynos chip for its Galaxy devices, and supplies Apple, among others, with ARM Cortex chips for various mobile devices. The company can’t use its own Exynos chips in US devices, however, due to LTE modem incompatibilities, causing phones like the Galaxy S III to be equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 instead which features an integrated LTE modem. It’s a pretty strange situation all around, but business is business at the end of the day.

UMC, meanwhile, will reportedly supply between 3,000 and 5,000 wafers for 28nm CPU creation per month. That’s around 20 to 33% of what TSMC currently produces for Qualcomm. The new chips have already passed verification, so you can expect to see them making their way into devices in the not too distant future. Another interesting tidbit: UMC has licensed a 20nm process, something which ARM and TSMC also set their gaze on back in October. That would lead to further performance improvements and better power management.

[via IntoMobile]

Samsung signs deal to produce Qualcomm’s 28nm chips is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
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