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...
Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4: MSM8960 & Krait Architecture Explored
Let's recap the current smartphone/tablet SoC landscape. Everything shipping today is built on a 4x-nm process, built either at Global Foundries, Samsung, TSMC or UMC. Next year we'll see...
108 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/7/2011
Samsung Talks About 32nm 1.5GHz Exynos SoC
In our Galaxy S 2 review we highlighted an extremely unique aspect of Samsung's latest: its Exynos 4210 SoC. The 4210 features two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/29/2011
Kal-El Has Five Cores, Not Four: NVIDIA Reveals the Companion Core
Last week NVIDIA provided an update on its Tegra SoC roadmap. Kal-El, its third generation SoC (likely to launch as Tegra 3) has been delayed by a couple of...
74 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/20/2011
There Will Be Two 32nm Atom SoCs in 2012: Medfield and One Other
Intel did a good job of showing off what it promises to deliver with Medfield at IDF: a reasonably looking smartphone and tablet built around the platform. As a...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/17/2011
The Updated Tegra Roadmap: Kal-El+ in 2012, Wayne in Late 2012/Early 2013
Last week we confirmed NVIDIA would be introducing a Tegra SoC with integrated Icera baseband called Grey, but we got the timeframe down. Above you'll see the updated Tegra...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/12/2011
NVIDIA Announces "Grey", First Tegra SoC with Integrated Baseband Due in 2012
Four months ago NVIDIA announced the acquisition of Icera, a baseband solution provider. Icera's technology didn't make it into any smartphones but it did have some success in the...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/9/2011
Qualcomm's March into the Gaming Market
We've mentioned before that the next-generation of mobile, particularly tablet, SoCs are supposed to give us performance equal to or greater than current generation gaming consoles (e.g. Xbox 360...
8 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/3/2011
Qualcomm's Updated Brand: Introducing Snapdragon S1, S2, S3 & S4 Processors
All microprocessor companies struggle with the same basic marketing problem: how do you explain to the average consumer why one part is faster than another without saying cache, GHz...
25 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/3/2011
Windows 8 on AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm & TI: Let the Race Begin
I'm in the audience of Microsoft's Partner Preview for Computex 2011, basically an event to give a sneak peak of the future of Windows to press and MS partners...
32 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/1/2011
NVIDIA's Kal-El Glowball Shows off Dynamic Lighting & Quad-Core Physics on a Tablet
I've warned both Qualcomm and TI that the danger they have to face in the SoC space going forward isn't just NVIDIA engineering, but NVIDIA marketing. Although too aggressive...
53 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/29/2011
Intel's Silvermont: A New Atom Architecture
Brooke Crothers broke a very important story today - he published the name Silvermont. Atom's first incarnation came to us in 2008 as a Pentium-like dual-issue in-order microprocessor. The...
53 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/12/2011
NVIDIA to Acquire Icera, Adds Software Baseband to its Portfolio
Late last year Intel announced the intention to acquire Infineon’s Wireless Solutions business, highlighting an important trend in the application processor space: those determined to lead in the smartphone/tablet...
18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/9/2011
Samsung's Tegra 2 Superphone: The GT-I9103
On Day 0 of this year's Mobile World Congress Samsung and NVIDIA announced that the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 will come to market with NVIDIA's Tegra 2 (T20) SoC...
29 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/16/2011
NVIDIA's Project Kal-El: Quad-Core A9s Coming to Smartphones/Tablets This Year
NVIDIA just dropped a bombshell. Not only is its third generation Tegra architecture, codenamed Kal-El, back from the fab but it's up and running Android after only 12 days...
77 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/15/2011
Qualcomm's Announces Krait CPU: The Successor to Scorpion
Last year Qualcomm told us about the MSM8960, its next-generation Snapdragon SoC based on a brand new microprocessor architecture. Today Qualcomm announced some more details on the architecture behind...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/14/2011
TI Reveals OMAP 5: The First ARM Cortex A15 SoC
TI sure does have impeccable timing. Not 12 hours after we published our LG Optimus 2X and NVIDIA Tegra 2 review, complete with a discussion of the 2011 SoC...
40 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/7/2011
NVIDIA's Project Denver: NV Designed, High Performance ARM Core: Updated!
NVIDIA's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang just announced Project Denver - its first CPU architecture design ever, based on ARM's ISA. This is a custom design done by NVIDIA in conjunction...
49 by Brian Klug on 1/5/2011
Nvidia Tegra 2 - Graphics Performance Update
So I have a confession to make. Before we posted our Tegra 2 performance preview, I ran the Quake 3 demo on the Viewsonic G Tablet and the Samsung...
28 by Vivek Gowri on 12/20/2010
GLBenchmark 2.0 Released - Modern SoCs Benchmarked
We've constantly on the lookout for new benchmarks to use for benchmarking the latest SoCs in devices. Today, Kishonti Informatics released the latest version of its popular GLBenchmark suite...
64 by Brian Klug on 12/17/2010
TI Reveals OMAP4440 Specs: Dual 1.5GHz Cortex A9, 25% Faster GPU, HDMI 1.4 3D, 1080p60
Next year is looking to be a very important year for smartphone and tablet performance. Just as we saw widespread migration to the ARM Cortex A8 and Qualcomm Scorpion...
39 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/8/2010
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