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Did Qualcomm Snub Intel?
Earlier this year Intel made a lot of noise about leasing its foundries to third parties, but at least one big played does not appear to be interested.
Speaking at a tech conference, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said his company is not interested in using Intel fabs and that it will continue to cooperate with established foundries like TSMC.
Jacobs argued that Intel is great at building huge volumes of equally huge cores, but TSMC is a tad more flexible. He pointed out that foundries like TSMC can run build multiple different products simultaneously, controlling the process using software.
“Intel is famous, has been known for having a copy-exact model, so they need very large volumes of a particular chip to run through that,” Jacobs said, reports ITProPortal.
However, Jacobs did point out that he was glad to hear Intel is joining the foundry space and that it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Is Qualcomm’s Adreno 400 Coming in 2014?
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Qualcomm’s Adreno 330 GPU will be replaced by new Adreno 400-series parts and naturally the new generation will be faster than the one that sits inside the Snapdragon 800.
Our sources are telling us that Adreno 400 is expected with the new version of Snapdragon that is set to debut in early 2014. Traditionally Qualcomm uses CES to showcase its new chips and CES 2014 starts on January 7th, so it sounds like the right time for it.
The only key detail that we learned about Adreno 400 is that despite a significant increase in GPU performance the chip won’t have a compute part and it doesn’t support OpenCL. Many will see this as a handicap, but to be honest we see limited uses for OpenCL in mobile chips, at least for now.
Nvidia’s Logan comes with Open CL 1.1 as well as Open GL 4.4 support. Adreno 330 can push 3.6 Gigapixels a second making it one of the fastest GPUs in mobile market, capable of going head to head with the Tegra 4. Adreno 400 naturally ends up faster.
Then again we expect that Logan Tegra 5 has what it takes to dominate the mobile GPU market in 2014. Let’s not forget about PowerVR 6-series parts, ARM’s recently announced Mali 700-series or Vivante’s upcoming mobile GPU designs, either.
Unlike the AMD-Nvidia duopoly in the PC GPU market, right now there are five players vying for the top spot in the mobile space and things are bound to get interesting.
CPU-Z Hits Android
Popular hardware identification tool CPU-Z has hit the Google Play Store. Like the PC version, the apps is completely free and it offers tons of information about your device.
It identified the SoC on board, along with the architecture and clock speed for each core. It also figures out the exact device brand, amount of RAM, storage, battery level, status and temperature. It can tap into the device’s sensor array, which is more of a gimmick than anything useful.
It’s worth noting that it is still in beta, so there might be some kinks to work out. If you’re eager to give it a go, you can find it here. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cpuid.cpu_z.
Qualcomm surpasses AMD
May 30, 2013 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
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It’s no secret that the mobile boom is taking a toll on makers of PC components and AMD is one of them. According to data from IC Insights, Qualcomm and Samsung have managed to pass AMD in microprocessor sales last year.
Intel still dominates the market, with $36.9 billion sales and a 65.3 percent market share. However, Qualcomm has managed to squeeze into second spot, with $5.3 billion in sales and a 9.4 percent share. Samsung ranked third, with $4.66 in sales and an 8.2 percent market share. Qualcomm and Samsung also recorded plenty of growth, 28 and 78 percent respectively.
However, AMD slumped 21 percent to take 6.4 percent of the market, with $3.6 billion in sales. It was still ahead of Freescale and Nvidia, as well as Texas Instruments and ST Ericsson.
It should be noted that about 83 percent of Samsung’s revenue came from chips churned out for Apple. In other words, had Apple built the chips on its own, it would have tied with AMD for the third spot.
TSMC Testing ARM’s Cortex A57
ARM and TSMC have manufactured the first Cortex A57 processor based on ARM’s next-gen 64-bit ARMv8 architecture.
The all new chip was fabricated on TSMC’s equally new FinFET 16nm process. The 57 is ARM’s fastest chip to date and it will go after high end tablets, and eventually it will find its place in some PCs and servers as well.
Furthermore the A57 can be coupled with frugal Cortex A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. This should allow it to deliver relatively low power consumption, which is a must for tablets and smartphones. However, bear in mind that A15 cores are only now showing up in consumer products, so it might be a while before we see any devices based on the A57.
In terms of performance, ARM claims the A57 can deliver a “full laptop experience,” even when used in a smartphone connected to a screen, keyboard and mouse wirelessly. It is said to be more power efficient than the A15 and browser performance should be doubled on the A57.
It is still unclear when we’ll get to see the first A57 devices, but it seems highly unlikely that any of them will show up this year. Our best bet is mid-2014, and we are incorrigible optimists. The next big step in ARM evolution will be 20nm A15 cores with next-generation graphics, and they sound pretty exciting as well.
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.
Qualcomm Throws $$ At Sharp
December 12, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Qualcomm is set to make a $120m investment in troubled Japanese display maker Sharp.
Rumours had been floating around that Qualcomm was looking to make an investment in Sharp, and the display maker has confirmed the investment. Qualcomm initially will invest $60m in Sharp through its Pixtronix subsidiary by the end of 2012 to help develop Sharp’s IGZO display technology.
Qualcomm will make a further $60m investment in Sharp should the initial work on its IGZO displays seem promising. Should Qualcomm complete the $120m investment in Sharp, that will make it the single largest shareholder with around five percent of the firm, primarily due to the fact that Sharp’s share price has fallen by almost 75 percent in 2012.
While Sharp said it will work with Qualcomm on further developing its display technology, the two firms will also look at working together on developing chip fabrication technologies.
It had been reported that Intel and Dell were also sniffing around Sharp, while Hon Hai is known to be looking to make a stake in the firm, though its demand for a seat on Sharp’s board is likely the main sticking point in negotiations. Sharp has warned that its future is in doubt if it cannot secure investment to repay large debts it amassed as part of its LCD manufacturing push back in 2006 and 2007.
Tegra 3 No Match For Adreno 320
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-cores are slowly starting to show up in new phone and tablet designs, and in case you’ve been following the market, you know they will be the fastest thing around until A15 parts appear.
But aside from the custom Krait core, Qualcomm’s new chips feature new Adreno 3 series graphics and judging by some early benchmarks, this is a match made in heaven.
Tom’s Hardware put the new graphics core to the test, with some very impressive results. Basically Adreno 320 blows the competition out of the water. However, it does not manage to surpass the huge SGX543MP4, used on the third generation iPad.
In GLBenchmark 2.1 the SGX543MP4 ranks first, with 251 and 139 points in Pro and Egypt tests. Adreno 320 comes in second, with 191/137, the SGX543MP2 scores 147/90, while the Tegra 3 TL30 scores 82/63. However, in fill rate tests Adreno 320 trails both the SGX543MP4 and SGX543MP2, but it is still miles ahead of the Tegra 3, SGX540 and Adreno 225.
However, in off-screen GLBench 2.5 Adreno 320 manages to squeeze ahead of SGX543 parts and the rest of the competition, but once again it loses in fill rate tests.