Over the last few days, several states have been hinting that they're trying to attract a major semiconductor manufacturer to set up shop in the US, and some new details have just recently emerged. New York, California, Texas, and Oregon are all said to be competing to become home to a major chip maker that will have ties with Apple.
LG plans to follow in Samsung's footsteps by designing its own ARM processors, execs from the company have confirmed, with the first example - the LG H13 - set to debut in a Smart TV at CES 2013 next month. The H13 has been designed by LG but will be built for the company by TSMC, The Korea Times reports, a 28nm chip expected to use ARM's Cortex A15 architecture as Samsung adopted in the Exynos 5250 and used in the Nexus 10 tablet.
Welcome to Wednesday evening everyone, just two more work days to go and then we're at the weekend again. Today we found out that new Nexus 4 orders won't ship for another 4-5 weeks, and that's if you're ordering the 16GB model - those who order the 8GB model might be waiting as long as two months. Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer said that Windows Phone sales these days are four times greater than they were in autumn 2011, which is definitely a good sign, while we learned that RIM has lost a big patent case against Nokia in Sweden.
We've been hearing that Apple is looking to replace Samsung as the main manufacturer of the CPUs found in its iDevices, and it seems that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC) will be the one to eventually take the reins. We're learning today that this could be both good and bad for TSMC - good, obviously, because Apple sells a lot of iPhones and iPads and would therefore need to buy a lot of CPUs. This could be bad for the same reason, though, considering that TSMC is going to need to dedicate a lot of its time and energy just to get Apple the components it needs.
Apple is moving to actively replace Samsung in its key supply chain roles, it's reported, minimizing its Korean foe's involvement to the bare minimum the two firms are contractually obligated to. Fueled by patent war antagonism, Apple sliced out Samsung's input from the design of its Apple A6 chipset found in the iPhone 5, sources tell The Korea Times, with an unnamed Samsung official apparently telling the paper that Apple "made it clear it will no longer use" the technology of its rival, relying on them only to manufacture the chips themselves. However, even that collaboration may be short-lived.
Apple and Samsung, as many of you already know, have not had the most civil of professional relationships. Samsung has long been a provider of hardware for Apple products, but with the recent high-profile patent suit between the two, it seems that relationship has soured a bit. New reports from CNET and Taiwan Economic News (via MacRumors) are claiming that Apple is looking to move away from Samsung when it comes to the chips for its products, instead striking a deal Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and having that company produce quad-core processors for future devices.
Samsung's memory and displays will be absent from the first batch of Apple's new iPhone, insiders claim, after pricing and legal disagreements saw the Cupertino firm slash orders from its long-time rival. Patent fight tensions and arguments over costs have led to a stalemate of sorts, insiders tell Reuters and Bloomberg, though Apple is also believed to be working to reduce its reliance on any one individual company. However, Apple hasn't been able to entirely oust Samsung from its iPhone 5 supply chain: the processor powering the new smartphone will apparently still be produced by the South Korean firm.
ARM and TSMC have inked a deal for the next-generation of 64-bit processors, paving the way for phones, tablets, notebooks and even servers which outclass x86 chips on performance and efficiency. The deal, which builds on an existing multi-year agreement between ARM and TSMC on 20nm production, will see ARM optimize its ARMv8 architecture and Artisan IP with TSMC's FinFET process technology, slashing the time it takes to bring new, advanced chips to market.
We may be reaching the point where raw specs no longer matter and the software experience is paramount, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping manufacturers from pushing the boundaries. Chip foundry TSMC has created a 28nm ARM-based chip capable of reaching speeds up to 3.1Ghz. The chip is a dual-core Cortex A9 variant, and based on the “high performance mobile” process.
TSMC, the company that fabricates the chips found in electronics the world over, has announced its Q1 financial results. Profits are up over last quarter, but they’re still below what the company was seeing for the Q1 of last year. Total revenue was NT $105.51 billion (~$3.59 billion), which gave TSMC a profit of NT $33.47 billion (~$1.14 billion). Revenue was up 0.1% over last year, but profits are down 7.7%.
Qualcomm have so far avoided chasing cores, saying that Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core chip is “overkill”. Instead the company is hoping that the latest version of its Snapdragon chip, the S4 “Krait”, will provide enough performance with just two cores. While development platforms have gone out to various publications and developers for testing, the 28nm chip could be facing production delays, which would have a knock-on effect on phones like the HTC One X and One S.
TSMC, tipped to be biting into Samsung's supply contract with Apple, has announced that it has begun volume production of 28nm chips and has products already shipping to customers, though the company did not confirm Apple was one of them. Instead, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Altera all get name-checked, with AMD and NVIDIA saying they will be using the 28nm process silicon in their next-gen graphics products.