Nice to see Cadence get a place in the spot light, usually nobody pays attention to the cutting edge software that makes the design of these chips even possible.
As iPhone 4S showed compared to iphone 4 - there is not much difference in day-to-day tasks now. But battery life could be improved on some Android phones, LTE phones - you name it.
Will this quad-core 20nm A15 chip be fast enough to run OS X? I'm wondering if in two years or so, Apple will be able to merge their desktop and mobile OS into one.
It could run a specially designed version of OSX(much in the same way windows 8 can run in a cortex a9), but it would not count as convergence yet since it would still be very limited.
I dont think apple is going to do anything like that until you can at least open photoshop in it while you have a webbrowser and itunes on the background.
Not well. Quadcore A15 should be somewhere in the same ballpark as the atom; so while you probably could run lighter apps without trouble it'd still collapse under anything that needs real processing power.
Well, I guess every baby step going forward is still a forward step. But, seriously, when is the last time anyone "announced" tapeout ? These days, maybe it'll be announced when silicon is produced, but obviously that's not going to happen with this. Normally, the immediate next step right after a tapeout is starting wafers. In this guess, starting 20nm wafers.
Does ANYONE think they're starting 20nm wafers within even the next year ? Absolutely not. Ship a 20nm ARM processor for revenue in 4 years ? Yeah, right.
I used to be a front end (wafer) product engineer after switching from design. It was my job to get masks built after tapeout and get wafers started. I've done this step many times.
This was just a Cadence tool exercise, nothing more. They took an existing ARM design for a current process technology, did some simple shrinking of the CAD design, and Voila !, they taped out 20nm ! All it takes is compute resources.
20nm ? They could have done the same thing for 5nm and it would mean just as much.
It was probably a working die; but there's a long gap between the first working things you get on a process in the lab and when the process is ready for mass production.
No. There's no die at all. They never went that far with this tapeout.
"Tapeout" is a carryover from the '80s and '90s when reel-to-reel magnetic tapes were used to store the completed design. The finished CAD files contain the artwork for each mask layer. After "tapeout", this mag tape gets sent to the mask shop to generate the individual masks which define each process layer (metal 1, metal 2, via, diffusion, etc).
In the real world, when you really do make wafers, after tapeout, the mask shop generates the masks (also called reticles) from the "tape". Today there's no tape, of course, but the term is still used. The CAD design is simply stored on a hard drive. Using the individual masks at the lithography step, wafers being built up get each level of the circuit created as the wafers go through the fabrication process. Since there's no 20nm process, this 20nm "tapeout" was never used and was never sent to create the mask set --- which today costs LOTS of money to make
Just in the news today -- "TSMC reiterated that a pilot line at Fab 12 Phase VI starting with 20nm process technology, would be timed around 2013/2014, and a production line set for Fab 15 following around 2015/2016"
So much for a 20nm ARM processor soon. Another reminder that "tapeout", after all, is just a tapeout, nothing more, nothing less. There's no actual silicon involved.
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gradjoh - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Nice to see Cadence get a place in the spot light, usually nobody pays attention to the cutting edge software that makes the design of these chips even possible.bravomail - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
As iPhone 4S showed compared to iphone 4 - there is not much difference in day-to-day tasks now. But battery life could be improved on some Android phones, LTE phones - you name it.Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Are you kidding?!? A8 is DIRT SLOW. Dual core A9 is at least kind of tolerable, and feels 900,000,000x faster than an A8.gevorg - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Will this quad-core 20nm A15 chip be fast enough to run OS X? I'm wondering if in two years or so, Apple will be able to merge their desktop and mobile OS into one.Gauner - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Not yet and not for 3 or 4 years at least.It could run a specially designed version of OSX(much in the same way windows 8 can run in a cortex a9), but it would not count as convergence yet since it would still be very limited.
I dont think apple is going to do anything like that until you can at least open photoshop in it while you have a webbrowser and itunes on the background.
B3an - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Theres a better and more capable alternative called "Windows 8". It will be out sooner too. It even runs on current ARM CPU's.DanNeely - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Not well. Quadcore A15 should be somewhere in the same ballpark as the atom; so while you probably could run lighter apps without trouble it'd still collapse under anything that needs real processing power.Hector2 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Well, I guess every baby step going forward is still a forward step. But, seriously, when is the last time anyone "announced" tapeout ? These days, maybe it'll be announced when silicon is produced, but obviously that's not going to happen with this. Normally, the immediate next step right after a tapeout is starting wafers. In this guess, starting 20nm wafers.Does ANYONE think they're starting 20nm wafers within even the next year ? Absolutely not. Ship a 20nm ARM processor for revenue in 4 years ? Yeah, right.
I used to be a front end (wafer) product engineer after switching from design. It was my job to get masks built after tapeout and get wafers started. I've done this step many times.
This was just a Cadence tool exercise, nothing more. They took an existing ARM design for a current process technology, did some simple shrinking of the CAD design, and Voila !, they taped out 20nm ! All it takes is compute resources.
20nm ? They could have done the same thing for 5nm and it would mean just as much.
jeremyshaw - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
So it's just a non-working die? Just a test pattern of sourts?DanNeely - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
It was probably a working die; but there's a long gap between the first working things you get on a process in the lab and when the process is ready for mass production.Hector2 - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
No. There's no die at all. They never went that far with this tapeout."Tapeout" is a carryover from the '80s and '90s when reel-to-reel magnetic tapes were used to store the completed design. The finished CAD files contain the artwork for each mask layer. After "tapeout", this mag tape gets sent to the mask shop to generate the individual masks which define each process layer (metal 1, metal 2, via, diffusion, etc).
In the real world, when you really do make wafers, after tapeout, the mask shop generates the masks (also called reticles) from the "tape". Today there's no tape, of course, but the term is still used. The CAD design is simply stored on a hard drive. Using the individual masks at the lithography step, wafers being built up get each level of the circuit created as the wafers go through the fabrication process. Since there's no 20nm process, this 20nm "tapeout" was never used and was never sent to create the mask set --- which today costs LOTS of money to make
Hector2 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
Just in the news today -- "TSMC reiterated that a pilot line at Fab 12 Phase VI starting with 20nm process technology, would be timed around 2013/2014, and a production line set for Fab 15 following around 2015/2016"So much for a 20nm ARM processor soon. Another reminder that "tapeout", after all, is just a tapeout, nothing more, nothing less. There's no actual silicon involved.
shbdf - Friday, November 4, 2011 - link
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