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Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7nm Smartphone Chips (ieee.org) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the first-in-line dept.
When Apple unveiled the iPhone Xs and Xs Max earlier today, it said they will contain the A12 Bionic chip -- the first smartphone processor to be made using 7nm manufacturing technology. But, as IEEE Spectrum points out, Huawei made the same claim late last month when it unveiled the Kirin 980 system on a chip. From the report: Apple's new A12 Bionic is made up of four CPU cores, six GPU cores, and an 8-core "neural engine" to handle machine learning tasks. According to Apple, the neural engine can perform 5 trillion operations per second -- an eight-fold boost -- and consumes one-tenth the energy of its previous incarnation. Of the GPU cores, two are designed for performance and are 15 percent faster than their predecessors. The other four are built for efficiency, with a 50 percent improvement on that metric. The system can decide which combination of the three types of cores will run a task most efficiently.

Huawei's chip, the Kirin 980, was unveiled at the IFA 2018 in Berlin on 31 August. It packs 6.9 billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. The company says it's the first chip to use processors based on Arm's Cortex-A76, which is 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient compared to its predecessors the A73 and A75. It has 8 cores, two big, high-performance ones based on the A76, two middle-performance ones that are also A76s, and four smaller, high-efficiency cores based on a Cortex-A55 design. The system runs on a variation of Arm's big.LITTLE architecture, in which immediate, intensive workloads are handled by the big processors while sustained background tasks are the job of the little ones. Kirin 980's GPU component is called the Mali-G76, and it offers a 46 percent performance boost and a 178 percent efficiency improvement from the previous generation. The chip also has a dual-core neural processing unit that more than doubles the number of images it can recognize to 4,500 images per minute. Apple will be the first to bring the 7nm chip in volume to market, as Huawei is expected to to start shipping its Mate 20 series phone (with the 7nm chip) a month or two later. Qualcomm also announced late last month that it's begun sampling its 7nm next-gen Snapdragon SoC. As IEEE Spectrum notes, the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.
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Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7nm Smartphone Chips More

Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7nm Smartphone Chips

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  • The real loser is Intel (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @10:24PM (#57303428)

    the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.

    And the real loser is Intel, if these 7nm parts actually do come to market in volume without yield issues. Nobody knows that for sure until it actually happens, at least nobody who is talking. We will know the answer in a month or so, and then we will know that Intel really did manage to turn its historical two year process lead into a one year lag.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      >and then we will know that Intel really did manage to turn its historical two year process lead into a one year lag

      Well that's why BK lost his job.

      Doing a corporate 'let us have all those within 2 years of retirement leave right now' routine in the middle of trying to bring 10nm yields up, and thus losing all the most experienced people was a stunningly bad move.

      FWIW, Intel is selling 10nm product today that is more dense than the '7nm' product that no one is selling today. So it's more of a leveling th

      • Intel is selling 10nm product today...

        Which product is that?

  • meanwhile... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jodka ( 520060 )

    The complexity of the physics and chemistry, the enormous manufacturing engineering effort and the management coordination required to direct the billions of dollars in capital necessary to achieve that is mind-boggling. Six point nine billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. It's at times like this when it seems we are finally living in the future. Electric cars, re-usable space rockets, 3D printed titanium.

    Meanwhile, FEMA finally found [cnn.com] the 20,000 pallets of potable water bottles it shippe

    • I sometimes think if "the aliens" ever did come down (which they won't , I have pretty strong doubts about the UFO guff) , their impression will be something like;-

      "Well, these guys are centuries away from FTL, they've got some garbage ideas about how to run a planet, their still pumping CO2 into the air, and dear god what the hell is with this war business.

      All in all, a primative, aggressive backwards ass planet. With one major exception. They've come absolutely miles with their computing abilities

    • You think you live in a capitalist free market?
      Interesting.

      I assume you also think it is somehow good that you paid your government to produce, store, then ship 20,000 pallets of water to PuertoRico, but that no one in that same government gave a shit about them actually being used to help anyone, because the profit had been made, the tickboxes had been ticked, and the bureaucrats all got their good feelz on.

      BTW, and I suspect it is over your head, TSMC is producing all of these chips - do you know what the

    • Meanwhile, FEMA finally found [cnn.com] the 20,000 pallets of potable water bottles it shipped to Puerto Rico. On the airfield where it left them. After the expiration date. Without devolving into absolutist Ayn Rand libertarian zealots, maybe we can all agree that there is something to this invisible hand, free market, capitalism stuff.

      Anyone who has used FedEx will likely beg to differ. The fact of the matter is that there are things that the public sector does significantly better than the private sec

    • Nice strawman there. Not that your argument make any sense in the first place. You're claiming there isn't a free market for water?
  • Why on earth would anyone name their product "bionic" if it didn't have something that connected to or operated in cooperation with a living organism?

    • Perhaps because it contains a core for handling artificial neural networks?

      if it didn't have something that connected to or operated in cooperation with a living organism?
      Because they don't find that a fitting definition for bionic?

      In german bionic means: mimicked after a living organism, not interacting/cooperating with one.

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