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ARM Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have announced a collaboration on 7nm chips. They have already worked together to create CPUs at the 16nm and 10nm process nodes. There is no indication that extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) will be used for 7nm chips, whereas IBM used the technology for its 7nm demonstration chip last year:
IBM was the first to announce the creation of a 7nm chip, although the innovative processes it used to create it also meant that mass production wouldn't be possible for a few more years, due to the high cost. Chances are that IBM's 7nm chips could arrive sometime in 2018, or in 2019 at the latest.
Intel has already delayed its 10nm chip production to the second half of 2017, which means its 7nm chips won't arrive until late 2019, or even early 2020. That gives IBM and other companies the opportunity to surpass Intel in cutting-edge process technology for the first time.
It's not clear when TSMC will be mass-producing 7nm chips. However, knowing that its 10nm chips are likely to appear early next year, then chances are that its 7nm chips will be ready sometime in 2019, potentially surpassing Intel with quicker production of 7nm chips, too.
Also at The Register .
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @03:29PM
Even worse, if users can slot in another "slow" CPU and still get the same instructions per second/dollar by clever software architecture the advantage of that really fast CPU will diminish. And as the clock rate seems to level out at 4.7 GHz the competition is likely to get there to (4.0 GHz for Intel).
The economy for new fast CPUs depend on parallelization being inefficient or impossible for the use cases. Otherwise users may just add CPUs as their processing needs change.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:41PM
Well, what you're describing is a disruptive change in the server room that assumes inherently sequential algorithms can be circumvented in many real world scenarios without bus issues. I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen soon.
But, what I was describing is withing the capabilities of existing designs like MediaTek's Helio X20 that's likely being fabricated by TSMC in 16nm as we speak...
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(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:07PM
Another solution is to solve problems with non-sequential algorithms. Ie to send a letter, instead of hiring the fastest runner you can buy for money. You send it by radio..
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:48PM
Wait, at least some relevant tasks outside academia are inherently sequential... No? It's true that 5 years ago when we didn't have parallel html parsers and concurrent image\video decoding and decompression built into our browsers, this statement carried more weight. But surely, it's still true for some server loads? Sometimes, you just can't get away from seq2seq in real life... No?
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(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:20PM
html parsing will likely to some extent by strictly sequential but audio, image and video compression is easy to parallelize.
I wonder when the next 10x CPU instructions/seconds jump will happen.