Samsung 14nm / 10nm GPU production?

Charlie claims that TSMC with their 16 nm manufacturing process is woefully behind Samsung's.

Why did he add that in the text, perhaps as some kind of 'hint' that there should be significant changes next year ? ?

http://semiaccurate.com/2015/06/19/amd-outs-caribbean-islands-aka-r9-300-series-gpus/

 

Well, 14nm products from Samsung have been on the market for a few months already, and TSMC's are nowhere in sight, so he's probably just stating the obvious.

 

Doesn't HiSilicon's Cortex-A57 based 32-core chips start series production next month at TSMC?
I was also under the impression that Samsung's supposedly stellar yields (70% or more), was more of a fabrication than the foundry process. If their yields are so great why would Apple divert production from Samsung to TSMC ?

 

Could actually be for the A9X as 16ff+ may have better performance (higher clocks) than the Samsung 14nm. Apple will also need incredible volume that one foundry may not be able to provide.

 

Because, I have noticed that, Apple changes their partners whenever in a different mood.
Who knows - perhaps they realised that Samsung is actually their direct competitor?

 

Didn't want to make a new thread for this -
Samsung Expands its Advanced Foundry Offerings with 14LPU and 10LPU Processes

Samsung just announced a fourth 14nm process 14LPU. As per Samsung - "14LPU, delivers higher performance at the same power and design rules compared to its third-generation 14nm process (14LPC). 14LPU will be optimally suited for high-performance and compute-intensive applications.". With high end going to 10nm..will 14LPU be cheap enough for mid-range SoCs?

In addition they announced a third 10nm process, 10LPU. As per Samsung - "10LPU, will provide area reduction compared to its previous generations (10LPE and 10LPP)". I'm guessing TSMCs 7nm forced their hand here and they had to do something or fall behind significantly. They also showed off a 7nm EUV wafer so presumably their roadmap is still 7nm EUV in 2019.

 

14LPU makes very much sense but i don't get the point of having a 3rd 10nm process. Better not be it because 7nm EUV is gonna get late....

 

Where do you see 14LPU being deployed? (I hope GF is also getting the benefit of these advances and we see an improved 14nm process with Raven Ridge for example. Its too late for the 8 core Zen part). I think they were almost forced to do a 3rd 10nm process to counter TSMC's 7nm process. Their "7nm" process, though with EUV, is a about year behind TSMC on the current roadmap (H2'18 vs H2'19).

 

Well, 2017 in TSMC terms is ~H2 of 2018 in reality, so I don't see any cause for concern for Samsung.

 

Likely being a "lower cost" option versus the very expensive 7nm process. even 14LPH is not here now, and it is said that 10LPP is not that far from 10LPE. 14nm will be the new 28nm for a few years IMO. I need to read more about the contracts to know if GF can fab for their clients in the newer 14nm process, because the LPH/LPU will help AMD very much, even doing 10nm don't making that sense until 7nm.

 

Umm..what? That's exactly what I wrote...TSMC 7nm in H2'18. But Samsung 7nm only in H2'19 so a gap of about a year.

True..14/16nm will stick around for a long time. I see the 14LPC or 16FFC processes being the most popular going forward though. What I meant is that we hardly see any mid-range SoCs using Finfet today (one each from Samsung, Qualcomm, Mediatek and Huawei) so I wonder if that will change going forward. 10LPP is indeed just a slight performance boost to 10LPE, just like 14LPP. GF has already accounced that they will skip 10nm and go straight to 7nm in 2018. AFAIK Raven Ridge in Q4'17 is the last CPU/APU AMD have planned on 14nm and then they will go to 7nm at GF.

 

Umm... what? TSMC is claiming 10nm in 2017 and 7nm in 2018. "Now, TSMC roadmap has been updated and the foundry claims that it will be ready to take 7nm orders by April 2017 and that production will start the year after that. " April 2018 + 1 year = April 2019. That is a few months lead, maybe.... Of course, there is always the chance that they will deliver on time, but I wouldn't bet on it....

 

What is April 2018+1 year??? TSMC will be producing 7nm by H2'18...what is so difficult to understand about that??

 

April 2019 last time I checked.

 

Autumn 2018 iPhones may disagree with that. And given the volumes we are talking about there....

 

TSMC CEO in July this year:
"“We believe our 7nm power, performance and area density (PPA) is ahead of our competitors,” Liu said. TSMC’s mobile and high-performance computing customers “all have aggressive product tape out plans in the first half of 2017 with volume production planned in early 2018,” he added."

 

Well, I almost put the disclaimer: *for anyone other than Apple.

And I am not disputing what TSMC is saying, just what they will actually deliver....