TSMC celebrated the launch of 3nm chip production in Taiwan

Earlier this month, TSMC held an event to mark the start of construction of a semiconductor plant in Arizona, and today in Taiwan the company celebrated the start of mass production of chips on the island.
Notably, such ceremonies are quite unusual for TSMC.According to the publication Focus Taiwan, Taiwan's TSMC today celebrates the beginning of mass production of chips in accordance with the 3-nm process technology.
The Fab 18 plant will start producing the latest and most advanced chips on the territory of South Taiwan Science Park in Tainan.It is very important that such celebratory ceremonies are not typical for TSMC.
Analysts do not rule out that the manufacturer demonstrates loyalty to its native island amid large-scale investments in the United States.
Industry experts say the company is holding the ceremony to show it intends to keep Taiwan as a major hub for chip research, development and manufacturing despite the fact that it is now investing heavily at the other end of the world.Note that Apple will be among the first to receive 3-nm chips.
Although Apple is now claiming the A16 chipset is produced according to the 4nm process, in fact TSMC is treating it as a 5nm variant with some refinements.
The first 3nm chipsets that will be available in Apple products will be the M2 Pro and M2 Max, which will be shipped to Macs in 2023.TSMC factories in Arizona will produce 4nm chips first and only later will produce 3nm chips.
The company's Taiwanese plants will begin producing advanced 3nm products first, with 2nm chipsets due to begin production in 2025.

Qualcomm announced chips for home routers with Wi-Fi 7 support and speeds up to 20 Gbps

Qualcomm has revealed chipsets for its new Immersive Home Platform series of routers for home networking equipment manufacturers.
The platform is aimed at brands looking to provide support for the IEEE 802.11BE or Wi-Fi 7 ready-to-approve standard.Image source: qualcomm.comNow Qualcomm has already sent the new chipsets to its partners producing home routers and mesh kits -- equipment based on these components is expected to go on sale in the second half of 2023.
According to the developer, Immersive Home Platform shares a common architecture with enterprise-class products, but is designed for home use.Qualcomm's new components allow critical advantages of the Wi-Fi 7 standard, such as wider channels of 320 MHz (in Wi-Fi 6E only 160 MHz).
Multi-Link Operation (MLO) is supported, allowing devices to simultaneously connect in two bands, such as 5 and 6 GHz.
Finally, there is Multi-Link Mesh technology, which provides a meshed network and can reduce latency by up to 75%.
Interference avoidance algorithms are included to help avoid congestion.

Qualcomm announced the development of Oryon - next-generation Arm processors for Windows laptops

Arm processor and Windows computers have been available for years, but the tandem is still not as popular as the combination of this OS with x86 architecture.
Nevertheless, Qualcomm is releasing more and more efficient chipsets for laptops - during the 2022 Snapdragon Summit, it was announced that it was developing new CPUs for Windows laptops.
The developer also promoted the idea that the future of Windows PCs is closely linked to Arm solutions and additional modules for processing AI algorithms.Image source: QualcommThe x86 architecture relies on two main components for computing - the CPU and GPU, so when working intensively with artificial intelligence algorithms, both types of gas pedals experience significant loads, consuming a lot of power in the process.
On the other hand, Snapdragon chipsets use the Hexagon digital signal processor (DSP), which performs AI-related tasks.
As a result, the resources of the core processors are freed up for other purposes.Image source: QualcommThe Snapdragon Summit was supported by Qualcomm's partners - Microsoft, Adobe, and Citi.
Microsoft noted that the SQ3 chipset is used in the new Surface Pro 9 5G with numerous features involving AI - from the ability to blur the background during video interviews to the camera's ability to maintain contact with the user's eyes regardless of what position the user is in relative to the lens.Adobe has previously added Snapdragon-based AI support for its Sensei machine learning tool that enhances the performance of Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere Pro.
The company says Snapdragon's AI engines will help improve even more Creative Cloud applications in 2023.
Citi isn't using anything yet, but reportedly plans to move 70% of its staff to mobile computers based on Qualcomm products - like the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s.Most of today's Snapdragon chipsets now use CPU cores produced under the Qualcomm-owned Kryo brand.
At first, the company used the architecture of its own development, but later switched to off-the-shelf solutions of the Arm Cortex family.
Now Qualcomm has announced that in the future it will introduce notebook CPUs of the new family Oryon.Image source: QualcommThe new platform will reportedly be the first to emerge from Qualcomm's acquisition of NUVIA - it is possible that this is the basis for the next generation computer platform, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4.
In addition, it is known that Oryon will use a custom architecture based on the Arm command set, but is not among the latter's off-the-shelf solutions.
The company has promised to start shipping the product to the market starting in 2023.

MediaTek unveiled the 5G modem T800, Kompanio 520 and 528 processors for Chromebooks and Pentonic 1000 for smart TVs

Taiwan's MediaTek unveiled various chips designed for Internet of Things devices, Chromebooks and smart TVs that will appear as part of various products in 2023.
Image source: mediatek.com5G modem MediaTek T800 is designed for gadgets other than smartphones - that is, for Internet of Things devices.
It supports a wide range of bands, including millimeter and sub 6 GHz.
The maximum theoretical speed on the incoming channel is 7.9 Gbps and 4.2 Gbps on the outgoing channel, which exceeds the actual speed of today's networks.
The modem supports simultaneous operation of two SIM cards.
The T800 is manufactured using 4nm process technology, increasing battery life on end devices.The MediaTek Kompanio 520 and 528 chipsets are designed for entry-level Chromebooks.
Here 8-core processors are used: 2 Arm Cortex-A76 cores and 6 Cortex-A55 cores.
The A55 cores in both cases run at 2.0 GHz, while on the Kompanio 520 performance A76 have the same 2.0 GHz, and on the Kompanio 528 they are overclocked to 2.2 GHz - no other differences between the chipsets.
For graphics is responsible subsystem Arm Mali G52 MC2 2EE.
There is also a dual-core APU unit to work with artificial intelligence algorithms.LPDDR4x memory and eMMC 5.1 type drives are supported.
The chipsets also support installation of cameras up to 32 megapixels, have hardware optimization for VP9 decoding and H.265 encoding, and allow for video connectivity at up to 60 frames per second.
Chromebooks on these chipsets will be able to work with their own Full HD+ displays and optional Full HD monitors.Finally, the Pentonic 1000 platform is designed for 4K resolution TVs and up to 144Hz.
It supports Wi-Fi 6/6E, Dolby Vision IQ with Precision Detail (higher detail in bright and dark areas) and screen division into 8 streams, there is also a powerful AI-processor.
The central processor is a 4-core Arm Cortex-A73 with a frequency of 2.0 GHz, and the graphics is processed by Arm Mali-G57 MC2.
MediaTek specified that the devices on the new platforms will be available in 2023.

MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity 9200, a 4nm flagship platform with Arm Cortex-X3, ray tracing and Wi-Fi 7

MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity 9200, a flagship mobile single-chip platform that uses the latest solutions for the mobile industry.
It is the first mobile platform to use the Arm Cortex-X3 main core with ARMv9 architecture and a 3.05 GHz operating frequency.
In addition to the Cortex-X3 core, the new chip uses three powerful 2.85 GHz Cortex-A715 cores and four efficient 1.8 GHz Arm Cortex-A510 cores.
The new chip is manufactured according to TSMC's second-generation N4P 4nm process.
Note that the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which will be the main competitor of MediaTek novelty, is rumored to have four core clusters: one Cortex-X3 (3.19 GHz), pairs of Cortex-A715 and A710 (2.8 GHz) and three Cortex-A510 (2.0 GHz).The second breakthrough solution in Dimensity 9200 is the advanced Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU with hardware ray tracing acceleration.
The new flagship platform supports Variable Rate Shading (VRS), that is variable rate shading, which should improve performance.
It also supports LPDDR5X random access memory with data transfer rate up to 8533 Mbit/s and the latest UFS 4.0 ROM.
There is also sixth generation AI processing unit (APU) 690, which provides up to 35% better performance compared to its predecessor, according to ETHZ5.0 benchmark.
It also features up to 30% and 45% reduction in power consumption for image noise removal and upscaling by AI.
The Dimensity 9200 supports up to two displays up to 5K resolution at 60 Hz or 1440p at 144 Hz or 1080p at 240 Hz.
It's also the first chipset to support Wi-Fi 7 at up to 6.5Gbps.
Of course, 5G networks are supported - both up to 6 GHz and millimeter band (mmWave), Bluetooth 5.3 is also provided.The Imagiq 890 image processor is capable of handling RGBW sensors, saving 34% power compared to the previous generation variant.
Finally, MediaTek eXtreme Power Saving technology is used on the basis of AI, allowing to use up to 30% less energy in general.It is expected that the first smartphones based on the Dimensity 9200 will appear on sale before the end of this year.
It is known that back in spring, according to AnTuTu benchmark, smartphones based on the Dimensity 9000 chip for the first time were among the top ten most powerful, displacing Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 models.

Meta and Qualcomm agree to jointly develop chips for virtual reality devices

Meta* has signed an agreement with Arm processor developer Qualcomm to create special custom chipsets designed for next-generation Quest series VR headsets.
The companies announced this at the IFA in Berlin.Image source: 3D NewsThe two companies will work together to design future chipsets based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR platform.
As reported by Reuters, the agreement demonstrates the dependence of Meta * of Qualcomm, even as the company began developing their own solutions for virtual, augmented and mixed reality devices.According to the head of Meta * Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg), \"Unlike cell phones, building VR brings new, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing...\" For example, there are a number of challenges to be met in optimizing the price and form factor of the devices.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta* is still in the early stages of development, and \"deep technical integration\" with a processor developer will help VR technology move toward a multi-dimensional computing platform.Meta* has been actively investing in wearable device technology like transparent AR/VR glasses.
For years, the company has relied on off-the-shelf Qualcomm chipsets to build its own VR devices, including the latest version of the Quest 2 headset, which is based on the Snapdragon XR2 chip.Image Source: 3D NewsThe chipsets being co-built will not be exclusively used by Meta*.
However, they will be optimized for Quest system specifications.
Financial terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.
The agreement covers only VR-devices and Meta* will continue to develop its own semiconductor solutions with other functionality.According to Meta*, there may be situations in which the company prefers off-the-shelf semiconductor solutions, but it is working on customization with industry partners while developing its own solutions.
Moreover, Meta* can use both its own and partner platforms in the same products.
* Included in the list of public associations and religious organizations in respect of which there is an effective court decision to liquidate or ban their activities on the grounds provided by Federal Law № 114-FZ \"On Counteracting Extremist Activity\" dated 25.07.2002.

The next MacBook Pro will get new M2 chips made with the old 5nm processor

Although the predictions of famous analyst Ming-Chi Kuo are not always accurate, his opinion is listened to.
Ming-Chi Kuo says the MacBook Pro will use Apple's M2 processors but will be built with a 5nm processor, though previous rumors suggested a 3nm chip.Image source: AppleThe new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are expected to ship in Q4 2022.
At the same time, according to TSMC's plan, 3nm chips for Apple \"will not start generating revenue\" until Q1 2023.
It turns out that the processors for the MacBook Pro will use the same process technology as the chips of the current generation, that is 5 nm.Image source: Min-Chi KuoAccording to the dynamics of previous releases, the rumors may well be true.
Especially since Kuo already has some credibility in the industry.
Earlier, the analyst made a prediction that the Apple iPhone 14 will rise in price relative to the smartphones of the previous series by an average of 15%.

Produce next-generation Tensor chips for Google Pixel 7 will be Samsung on the 4-nm processor

South Korean media again published information that Google will order the production of the next-generation Tensor single-crystal platform (Cloudripper GS201) from Samsung.
It is expected that the chipset will be used in smartphones Google Pixel 7 series.Image source: GoogleThe specifications of the new mobile platform is still known very little.
The new chip is expected to use Samsung's 4-nm process and will use PLP (panel-level packaging) - a fairly rare variant that uses a square wafer instead of a round one in chip production, reducing waste and production costs.The current, first-generation Tensor chipset, codenamed Whitechapel, is also produced by Samsung according to the 5-nm LPE process.
The model is famous for its unusual architecture, involving the use of two large cores Arm Cortex-X1 - most mobile platforms have either one such core, or none at all.Image source: ULVACGoogle said that the use of two cores X1 is more effective for constant loads of \"medium\" level, with \"heterogeneous\" calculations, including, for example, providing the camera viewport - during the work involved several heterogeneous processes.According to some reports, Samsung will begin production of new Tensor in June, and the release This is consistent with the traditional timing of the Made By Google event, during which the Pixel series flagships are usually presented.
It is possible that Samsung will produce server chips for Google as well.
Last year, the company announced a large recruitment of specialists to develop custom cloud and server semiconductors, although there were rumors that it would do these tasks together with Intel.While most users care little about the question of who exactly produces the new chipsets, the news may indirectly indicate some characteristics of semiconductors.
Samsung's 4nm process was used to produce the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but an improved version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus is already being produced using a more advanced 4nm TSMC process - the new version offers lower power consumption and some performance gains over Samsung's technology.
If the flagship Qualcomm 2023 will be produced exactly by TSMC, and, according to rumors, this will be the case, the less perfect mobile platform manufacturing process for Pixel 7 will give Snapdragon some head start, other things being equal, but in order to assess the final performance of competing chipsets, we will have to wait for the winter premiere of Qualcomm.