Introduction

Back in 2013, OnePlus jumped into the smartphone scene with a bang, introducing their OnePlus One smartphone, which quickly distinguished itself by offering flagship class smartphone features at a pricepoint of just $299. Thanks to massive community support, OnePlus was able to quickly build a name for itself as the enthusiast class smartphone with the best value possible.

Fast forward to June 2017 and OnePlus has continued this tradition of delivering flagship class smartphones at very reasonable prices. The OnePlus 5 featured all the latest and greatest hardware including a 5.5-inch AMOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, [...]

Samsung has begun mass producing their 2nd Generation 10nm-class 8Gb DDR4 DRAM. According to the announcement, the new Samsung 2nd Generation 10nm-class 8Gb DDR4 features speeds up to 3,600 Mbps per pin, which provides around 10% improved performance and 15% improved power efficiency compared to 1st Generation 10nm-class 8Gb DDR4.

In order to achieve the improved performance and power efficiency, Samsung developed a new high-sensitivity cell data sensing system which allows a more accurate determination of data stored within a data cell along with a unique “air spacer” design which helps dramatically decrease parasitic capacitance.

“By developing [...]

Samsung has announced today that its 8nm LPP FinFET process has been qualified and ready for production three months ahead of schedule.

According to the announcement, Samsung’s 8nm LPP will bring up to 10% power efficiency and 10% area reduction over the 10nm LPP thanks to the narrower metal pitch. The 8nm LPP node will be Samsung’s last node before transitioning to 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet).

Samsung states that the 8nm LPP will soon transition into stable mass production using current production techniques used for the 10nm LPP node.

“With the qualification completed three months ahead of schedule, we have commenced 8LPP production,” [...]

Samsung is continuing the push to the limits of process technology as the company recently revealed two of its newest manufacturing processes, 11nm LPP (Low Power Plus) and 7nm LPP with EUV.

According to the announcement, Samsung’s new 11nm LPP is an alternative process to the 10nm FinFET process designed for mid-range to high end mobile processors. The 11nm LPP process offers up to 15% higher performance and up to 10% chip area reduction while drawing the same amount of power as their current 14nm LPP process. The new process is scheduled for production in the 1H2018.

Following the 11nm LPP process is the 7nm LPP process with EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) [...]

Samsung recently launched their highly anticipated smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, at their Unpacked event recently held in New York City.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is marks Samsung’s first return to the Galaxy Note series after the massive failure of the Galaxy Note 7, a smartphone that was plagued with battery issues resulting in Samsung completely pulling the smartphone only a few months after its initial introduction.

As expected, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is packed with some of the latest features available to modern smartphones including its hallmark feature, the 6.3-inch 2960×1440 resolution Super AMOLED “Infinity Display” [...]

Though Intel’s Coffe Lake family of processors have yet to launch, Intel has already started the motion of preparing Ice Lake, the successor to the Cannon Lake family of CPUs.

Ice Lake will succeed Cannon Lake as Intel’s 9th generation Core processor family. Though there’s little information to go by, we do know that it will use Intel’s 10nm+ FinFet.

The foundations for Ice Lake will be laid by Cannon Lake, Intel’s 8th generation Core processor. Cannon Lake will be the first to use 10nm FinFET, the first node shrink since the release of Broadwell CPUs in 2014. Intel touts that its 10nm FinFETs can deliver up to 25% better [...]

A mysterious “Genuine Intel CPU 0000” has appeared in SiSoft Sandra benchmark database, said to be likely an engineering sample of Intel’s upcoming Coffee Lake CPU.

The chip in question has six cores featuring a base clock of 3.1GHz and a turbo clock of 4.2GHz. It carries 256KB of L2 cache per core and 9MB of shared L3 cache. The chip reportedly has a die size of 149mm².

What tier this chip sits at is unknown, but considering the competitive pressure from AMD, it could very well slot into the consumer Intel Core i7-8700K. A quad-core variant will also be available but will be manufactured under a smaller, 126mm² die.

Coffee Lake will be [...]

IBM Research Alliance recently announced that they’ve developed a process to produce the world’s first 5nm transistors. The new transistors will allow IBM to squeeze as much as 30 billion transistors into a chip just 50mm² resulting in as much as 40% improvement in performance at the same power or a 75% reduction in power at the same level of performance when compared to current generation cutting edge 10nm technology.

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Apple’s iPhone 8 is on track to launch in September and go on sale in October, according to a recent report by Economic Daily News.

This new statement contradicts previous beliefs that the iPhone 8 will be delayed due to poor yields of the OLED displays. Analysts predicted that the iPhone production will be severely hampered by supply after the initial launch.

Newly improved production yield rates have seemingly resolved this issue. Volume production of components will ramp up in June. iPhone manufacturing companies including Foxconn, Winston, and Pegatron are also aggressively recruiting and training new workers to prepare for the production of new [...]

At Intel’s recent Technology and Manufacturing Day, Intel presented more details regarding its 10nm FinFET manufacturing process. In the presentation materials, Intel highlighted some of the major improvements that its 10nm FinFET process will bring.

 

In order to cram even more transistors than ever before, Intel is using both traditional scaling techniques along with a few new ones which they call Hyper Scaling.

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