SoCs
This week Samsung Electronics and Synopsys announced that Samsung has taped out its first mobile system-on-chip on Samsung Foundry's 3nm gate-all-around (GAA) process technology. The announcement, coming from electronic design automation Synopsys, further notes that Samsung used the Synopsys.ai EDA suite to place-n-route the layout and verify design of the SoC, which in turn enabled higher performance. Samsung's unnamed high-performance mobile SoC relies on 'flagship' general-purpose CPU and GPU architectures as well as various IP blocks from Synopsys. SoC designers used Synopsys.ai EDA software, including the Synopsys DSO.ai to fine-tune design and maximize yields as well as Synopsys Fusion Compiler RTL-to-GDSII solution to achieve higher performance, lower power, and optimize area (PPA). And while the news that Samsung has developed a high-performance SoC using the Synopsys.ai...
AMD Expands G-Series Embedded SoCs with Excavator Microarchitecture
Back in October 2015, AMD’s embedded business unit announced the first SoCs from AMD using DDR4, combining AMD’s Excavator cores found in the Carrizo notebook platform but fully...
6 by Ian Cutress on 2/23/2016Early Exynos 8890 Impressions And Full Specifications
It's been an interesting day here in Barcelona as I've had the pleasure to get a hands-on with both LG's new flagship, the G5, as well as Samsung's new...
94 by Andrei Frumusanu on 2/21/2016Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge
If you've followed our reviews for the past year, it was probably evident that the Galaxy S6 was one of the best phones launched last year. With one of...
123 by Joshua Ho on 2/21/2016Samsung Announces New Exynos 7870 Mid-Range 14nm SoC
Today Samsung announced a new mid-range SoC called the Exynos 7870. The new SKU sports 8x Cortex A53s running at up to 1.6GHz. The GPU should be an ARM...
17 by Andrei Frumusanu on 2/17/2016The Apple iPad Pro Review
At this point it probably isn’t a secret that tablet sales have leveled off, and in some cases they have declined. Pretty much anywhere you care to look you’ll...
408 by Ryan Smith, Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on 1/22/2016NVIDIA Discloses Next-Generation Tegra SoC; Parker Inbound?
While NVIDIA has been rather quiet about the SoC portion of the DRIVE PX 2, it’s unmistakable that a new iteration of the Tegra SoC is present. The GPUs and...
23 by Joshua Ho on 1/5/2016The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Performance Preview: Meet Kryo
I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat this, but 2015 has not been a particularly great year for Qualcomm in the high-end SoC business. The company remains a...
146 by Ryan Smith & Andrei Frumusanu on 12/10/2015Correcting Apple's A9 SoC L3 Cache Size: A 4MB Victim Cache
Along with today’s analysis of Chipworks’ A9X die shot, I’m also going to use this time to revisit Apple’s A9 SoC. Based on some new information from Chipworks and...
14 by Ryan Smith on 11/30/2015More on Apple’s A9X SoC: 147mm2@TSMC, 12 GPU Cores, No L3 Cache
Over the Thanksgiving break the intrepid crew over at Chipworks sent over their initial teardown information for Apple’s A9X SoC. The heart of the recently launched iPad Pro, the...
121 by Ryan Smith on 11/30/2015Samsung Announces Exynos 8890 with Cat.12/13 Modem and Custom CPU
In an unexpected and surprise annoucement, Samsung today revealed its new generation flagship SoC - the Exynos 8. The Exynos 8890 to be more specific, is the successor to...
56 by Andrei Frumusanu on 11/12/2015NVIDIA Announces Jetson TX1 - A Tegra X1 Module & Development Kit
Although NVIDIA’s original plans for Tegra haven’t quite panned out as NVIDIA wanted to – at this point even tablet wins are few and far between – the company...
34 by Ryan Smith on 11/10/2015Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Experience: HMP Kryo and Demos
While the Snapdragon 820 has had a number of announcements about various aspects of the SoC, some details have been mostly left to the imagination. Today, Qualcomm held an...
26 by Joshua Ho on 11/10/2015Imagination Announces New P6600, M6200, M6250 Warrior CPUs
Today Imagination launches three new MIPS processor IPs: One in the performance category of Warrior CPUs, the P6600 and two embedded M-class core, the M6200 and M6250. Warrior P6600 Starting off...
15 by Andrei Frumusanu on 11/10/2015HiSilicon Announces New Kirin 950 SoC
Today in Beijing, HiSilicon held an extensive media briefing on their brand new flagship SoC - the Kirin 950. The new chipset is a very large leap for the...
41 by Andrei Frumusanu on 11/5/2015The Apple iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Review
To be perfectly honest, this past year has been remarkably boring in the mobile segment. For whatever reason, phones have either stood still or regressed when it comes to...
531 by Ryan Smith & Joshua Ho on 11/2/2015Analyzing Apple's Statement on TSMC and Samsung A9 SoCs
Since we first learned that the A9 SoC in Apple’s iPhone 6s lineup is dual sourced - that is that it's being made by two different vendors with two...
147 by Ryan Smith & Joshua Ho on 10/9/2015Marvell Announces First MoChi Architecture Modules: SoCs Go To Pieces
Much has been written over the last few years on the significant cost issues semiconductor companies are and will be facing over the coming years. While newer manufacturing nodes...
7 by Ryan Smith on 10/6/2015Google’s Chromecast 2 is Powered By Marvell’s ARMADA 1500 Mini Plus - Dual-Core Cortex-A7
When Google originally announced the second-generation Chromecast last week, in typical Google fashion they focused on features and uses over specifications. Given the capabilities of the new product we...
18 by Ryan Smith on 10/5/2015Apple’s A9 SoC Is Dual Sourced From Samsung & TSMC
Picking up from our conversation this morning on Apple’s A9 SoC, the crew over at Chipworks has been working hard over the weekend to decap A9 and their first...
99 by Ryan Smith on 9/28/2015iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results
At this point the iPhone release cycle is pretty well understood. One year, Apple releases the design refresh that changes the external design significantly while generally focusing on evolving...
185 by Joshua Ho on 9/28/2015