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Samsung, TSMC, AMD and Intel at ISSCC: 7nm SRAM, ZEN and Altera FPGAs detailed

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The International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) is around the corner, and that means that some of the biggest players (and greatest minds) behind these particular pieces of technology will be in attendance. The annual event will gather about 3,000 engineers in February to share state-of-the-art work across a wide range of logic and memory chips.

At a time when progress in traditional chip scaling is slowing down (with continued reports regarding the death of Moore's law, at least in regard to currently-used manufacturing techniques and materials), Samsung and TSMC will describe 7nm SRAMs. In general-purpose processors, AMD will give an in-depth look at its upcoming Zen x86 core, and Intel will detail its Altera Stratix 10 FPGA. In memories, Samsung and a team of Western Digital and Toshiba will show competing 512 Gbit 3-D NAND flash chips.





TSMC is expected to unveil the smallest SRAM bit cell published to date: at 0.027mm2, a 256 Mbit SRAM chip is made in a 7nm FinFET process using write-assist circuitry for low Vmin applications. Samsung, however, will not be far behind, presenting a 7nm FinFET SRAM less than 0.030mm² in area. Interestingly, the part is made using extreme ultraviolet lithography - a technology expected to allow further reductions in production scales, but rendered extremely, technically difficult to achieve. That said, Samsung announced earlier this year it plans to put EUV steppers into production earlier than rivals, in part because it is testing them in both logic and memory fabs, whereas TSMC has said it will wait for 5nm before inserting EUV.

Separately, researchers will give keynote talks on the state of two emerging technologies expected to have broad impact -- DNA sequencing and quantum computing, while Mediatek will show a more conventional 10nm SoC and STMicroelectronics will unveil a neural network accelerator made in a fully depleted silicon-on-insulator process. Also, two keynotes at ISSCC will explore emerging ways to advance semiconductors with chip stacks, novel circuit designs and new materials.

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DNA sequencing, hell yeah it is about time that big semiconductor companies picking up the wind that personal genome sequencing is becoming the reality fast.
 
That white spot on the bottom-left corner of the Zen picture is driving me nuts.

Hopefully we get even more information about Zen, and 7nm SRAM becomes a reality and we get bigger, faster caches.
 
That white spot on the bottom-left corner of the Zen picture is driving me nuts.

Hopefully we get even more information about Zen, and 7nm SRAM becomes a reality and we get bigger, faster caches.

I'm convinced we won't learn anything useful about Zen until it actually launches. For better or for worse...

I don't see what the big deal is. Intel probably has multiple moles feeding them everything. Even just a few hard numbers would prevent lots of people from buying skylake right now (assuming it's up to snuff).
 
Cool, so the next zen processor is going to have a zen logo engulfed by an Alien writing from The Arrival stamped on the heat sink? I hope that won't affect cooling performance though.
 
Cool, so the next zen processor is going to have a zen logo engulfed by an Alien writing from The Arrival stamped on the heat sink? I hope that won't affect cooling performance though.
Do you mean the circle? lol. ??
 
Cool, so the next zen processor is going to have a zen logo engulfed by an Alien writing from The Arrival stamped on the heat sink? I hope that won't affect cooling performance though.

Thought I was the only one who saw that :toast:
 
That white spot on the bottom-left corner of the Zen picture is driving me nuts.
The picture is edited, and that white spot is the tip of the AMD symbol.
 
That white spot on the bottom-left corner of the Zen picture is driving me nuts.

Hopefully we get even more information about Zen, and 7nm SRAM becomes a reality and we get bigger, faster caches.

Since we at TPU care about the mental health and psychological well-being of our readers and faithful followers, you'll be adequately humbled to know that I have edited the image so as not to imbibe you with any sort of dark thoughts.

IE, fixed :p
 
The picture is edited, and that white spot is the tip of the AMD symbol.

Since we at TPU care about the mental health and psychological well-being of our readers and faithful followers, you'll be adequately humbled to know that I have edited the image so as not to imbibe you with any sort of dark thoughts.

IE, fixed :p
Thank you.
 
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