tsmc

Inside the iPhone 5

With anticipation for Apple's iPhone 5 (or whatever branding is ultimately used) extremely high, most of the focus has been, not surprisingly, on design and timing. But what will make the iPhone 5 tick? That's the question I asked a couple of experts.

The upcoming phone is expected to pack Apple's latest and greatest A5 silicon, a Qualcomm 3G chip, and circuits that support a higher-resolution camera.

A5 chip: The Apple A5 houses the main processor--or so-called application processor--that will power the phone. The A5 (technically a system-on-a-chip or SoC) is the same chip that currently powers the iPad 2. The A5 distinguishes itself from the older A4, used in the iPhone 4, by having two processor cores (the A4 has one) and faster graphics circuits. Two cores allow the device--like the iPad 2--to multitask better than a single-core phone.

"It's liable to be the A5," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a company that tracks the phone chip market. But Strauss expects the chip to be a variation of the A5 in the iPad 2. "It's a geometric shrink of the A5. The geometries (size of the chip) will be smaller," he said. … Read more

Apple's A6 chip in pilot production

Apple has consigned trial production of its future A6 processor to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and not Samsung, its traditional manufacturing partner, according to a Reuters report.

The A6 processor is still a distant destination on Apple's chip road map. It isn't expected to appear in products until 2012, and analysts believe it will be quad-core, a first for an Apple A series chip. The A5, used in the iPad 2, is a dual-core processor.

Talk of Apple jumping to Taipei-based TSMC has been driven, in part, by the legal skirmishes between Apple and Samsung. The latter has been Apple's sole manufacturing source for A4 and A5 processors. … Read more

As Apple seeks new chip suppliers, theories abound

With Apple seeking to lessen its dependency on Samsung as a processor supplier, a number of chip-supplier scenarios are emerging for Apple's next generation of devices.

Amid serious legal squabbling with Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is likely to be the first to capture Apple's new business. But Intel, which already makes all of Apple's desktop and laptop processors, is also in the running for other devices.

TSMC scenario: TSMC may first appear, in the fourth quarter, as a second-source supplier of the A5 processor, according to Gus Richard, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, who wrote … Read more

AMD spinoff lands top chip company as customer

Globalfoundries, the manufacturing concern spun off from Advanced Micro Devices, plans to announce Wednesday that it has signed up STMicroelectronics--its first true outside customer.

Globalfoundries was created last year in order to eliminate the crippling overhead that AMD was incurring to manufacture its processors. Globalfoundries now conducts business as a contract chip manufacturer, commonly referred to as a foundry.

AMD owns 34.2 percent of the company, while Advanced Technology Investment Co. owns the rest. ATIC is an investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates.

Last week, Globalfoundries broke … Read more

AMD spinoff seeks to rival chipmaking giants

Advanced Micro Devices' spinoff Globalfoundries will use a groundbreaking ceremony this Friday to proclaim that it's ready to go head to head with the world's largest chipmakers.

Globalfoundries, formerly the chip manufacturing operations of AMD, will break ground next week in Malta, N.Y., on a $4.2 billion facility that may put it among the elite chipmakers of the world. But to get there, it needs big customers. One--or more--of those names will be announced in the next 30 days, according to Jon Carvill, director of corporate communications at Globalfoundries.

Early customers may include companies that design … Read more

GPUs and the new 'digital divide'

I spent Tuesday at Nvidia headquarters, attending the company's annual Analyst Day.

I've been to most of Nvidia's analyst events over the last decade or so, since I covered Nvidia almost from its inception while working as the graphics analyst at Microprocessor Report. These meetings are always a good way to get an update on the company's business operations, and sometimes--like this time--one provides exceptionally good insight into larger industry trends.

Nvidia has had a rough couple of quarters in the market, which CEO Jen-Hsun Huang blamed in part on a bad strategic call in early 2008: to place orders for large quantities of new chips to be delivered later in the year. When the recession hit, these orders turned into about six months of inventory, much of which simply couldn't be sold at the usual markup.

In response, Nvidia CFO David White outlined measures the company plans to take to increase revenue, sell a more valuable mix of products, reduce the cost of goods sold, and cut back on Nvidia's operating expenses.

Three things stood out for me in this presentation:

Nvidia is planning an aggressive transition to state-of-the-art ASIC fabrication technology at TSMC, the company's manufacturing partner. Within "two to three quarters," White said, about two-thirds of the chips Nvidia sells will be made using 40-nanometer process technology. (The first of these chips were announced Tuesday.)

White also acknowledged something that I've long assumed to be true: Nvidia receives "preferential allocation" on advanced process technology at TSMC. It's logical that Nvidia should get the red-carpet treatment, having been TSMC's best customer for many years, but I don't recall hearing Nvidia or TSMC put this fact on the record before.

The third notable point from White's presentation: the gross margins for Nvidia's Tegra, an ARM-based application processor--which Nvidia's Mike Rayfield, general manager of the Tegra division, says has already garnered 42 design wins at 27 companies--are much higher than I'd have guessed--at "over 45 percent." That's quite excellent for an ARM-based SoC; it's a very competitive market.

More surprises The technical sessions at the event contained their own surprises.

For example, Nvidia effectively seized control of an old Intel marketing buzzword: "balanced."

For years, Intel used to talk about… Read more

Would you buy an Intel smartphone?

Intel smartphone and mobile Internet device concept designs have potential. So, as Intel prepares to enter the smartphone market with LG Electronics and others, will these designs be realized? And would you buy one?

One thing is certain. A re-badged Apple iPhone running Windows isn't going to upset the Apple cart (pun intended).

So, one obvious challenge is for Intel to get its considerable weight behind a new smartphone or mobile Internet device (MID) design that resets the market.

Just so happens there's a design that Intel has been brandishing for a couple of years now (see photos). … Read more

A 'post-x86 world'? Preposterous!

I honestly don't know whether Om Malik's blog site, GigaOM, is intended to be informative or merely entertaining. I pointed out a previous example of the overwrought rhetoric that permeates that site last September (in the context of Comcast's then-new usage cap policy), but generally, I try to ignore the nonsense there for the same reasons that I ignore talk radio.

But like it or not, GigaOM is widely read, and sometimes when a post there bears directly on a market that's important to me, I can't bear to let it go. This is one … Read more

Intel and TSMC: What are they thinking?

Don't get me wrong-- I think the Intel-TSMC alliance announced earlier this week is a good thing for both companies.

But the official explanation, that Intel wants TSMC's help to make Atom processor cores more widely available to the industry, just doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason for the deal.

Intel hardly needs TSMC's help to make SoCs (systems on a chip). Intel has been making highly integrated devices for the embedded market, as well as PC chipsets for a long time. It already has enough of the building blocks and enough experienced engineers to … Read more

Intel-TSMC tie-up targets Atom chip

Updated at 10:50 a.m. PST with additional information from announcement and Intel-TSMC conference call.

Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will collaborate on Atom chip production, the companies announced Monday.

For its part, Intel is eying big markets--such as smartphones--where it is currently not a player, but TSMC is. "Many of our customers already had an existing IP (Intellectual Property) infrastructure on TSMC that they would like to take advantage of as they ramp Atom-based products. That's essentially what the agreement is about," said Anand Chandrashekar, senior vice president at Intel, speaking Monday morning in … Read more