Moore’s Law lives on with speedy 7nm mobile chips coming in 2018
ARM is equipping TSMC to manufacture faster and more power-efficient chips. Agam Shah reports
How do mobile devices keep get faster, thinner, and more power efficient? It’s thanks to the quick advances in chip manufacturing, which help churn out smaller processors packed with new features.
The next round of premium smartphones early this year could feature chips such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, made using the latest 10-nanometer process. Continuing with the Moore’s Law observation, it’s likely that two years after this, smartphones will get even faster and smaller chips will be produced using a 7nm process.
Smartphone chipmaker ARM recently revealed it is working with prominent chip manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) to produced 7nm chips. Production is expected to start in 2018, explained Ron Moore, vice president of marketing for ARM’s physical design group. In ARM’s trials, the 7nm processors provided a 15- to 20 percent speed boost compared to those made using TSMC’s 16nm process. Manufacturers could tweak the architecture to bring even better performance.
ARM-based processors for servers and IoT devices will also be made on the 7nm process. Ultimately, only the chipmakers using ARM designs will be able to provide metrics on performance improvements based on the tweaks they made, Moore said.
New technologies such as virtual reality are demanding more performance out of chips. The ARM manufacturing IP provided to TSMC solves some challenges around memory, power distribution, and moving data in and out of memory. For example, many customers are planning multi-GPU configurations for servers in the cloud or for machine-learning infrastructures. The chip IP provides data path optimisations, so data can travel quickly within these infrastructures and at the right power consumption levels. Many advances are expected on the 7nm process, including EUV (extreme ultraviolet) that allows for finer details to be etched on chips. Chips designed with the ARM’s IP won’t require designers to have deep knowledge about the underlying manufacturing technologies, Moore said.
TSMC’s rival Globalfoundries is also moving to the 7nm process, and production could start in 2018. Samsung hasn’t publicly talked about its 7nm plans, while Intel says it has “visibility” of 7nm, meaning it is on the company’s roadmap, but hasn’t talked about when it will be implemented.
The next step beyond 7nm is the 5nm process, which was discussed at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting. Participants also discussed silicon replacement materials, such as silicon germanium.
Intel is already planning to use III-V materials, based on elements from the third and fifth columns of the periodic table, like gallium-arsenide, in forthcoming chips. Gallium arsenide is a better electricity conductor than silicon, and it could add to the power efficiency of chips.
The next round of premium smartphones early this year could feature chips such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, produced using the latest, 10-nanometer process