
Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7-nm Smartphone Chips - extarial
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/processors/apple-huaweii-both-claim-first-7nm-smartphone-chips
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40acres
Disclosure: I work for Intel.

As far as I can tell nanometer is basically a marketing term now and will not
be as important to performance as it has been in the past. Not only is there
not a standard for what constitutes a Xnm chip these days (Intel, TSMC &
Samsung all have different descriptions) but chips in the future will be
heterogeneous in which features are a specific nanometer size. It's getting so
expensive to reduce nanometer size that the next generation of products will
have some 5 nanometer features, some 10 nanometer features, and some 7
nanometer features.

Chip packaging technology, power performance and advanced fabrication
techniques (ex. EMIB, stacked die, EUV, die disaggregation) will decide who
has the most performant chips from now on, not feature size.

~~~
whoisjuan
I don't understand why. Could you elaborate more? Isn't the whole point of
reducing the minimum feature size to increase the number of transistors that
you can pack in a layout or in other words the smaller the node, the more
density you get and therefore more processing power with less energy
consumption? How is that not supposed to impact performance?

~~~
mooman219
The gist of what's being said on this post and the thread on Apple's video is
that everyone is generally around the same size for various features. So we
might get marketing speak that we're on "10nm" or "7nm" or "5nm", but that
doesn't correlate to much. Just like "4G" and "5G" technically mean something,
that doesn't mean the carrier offers speeds remotely close to the
specification they say they provide.

Features lists generally include the transistor gate pitch, interconnect
pitch, transistor fin pitch, and transistor fin height. None of these features
are actually "10nm" or "7nm, but range anywhere between 30nm-60nm. Although
sources are conflicting online, it looks like Intel 10nm is about on par with
TSMC 7nm. Some features for Intel's 10nm are larger, while others are smaller
than TSMC 7nm. Also _most_ sites are saying Intel 10nm has a higher transistor
density, but information is kind of flaky on this metric.

~~~
whynotminot
What's funny about this still though is that people keep saying TSMC's 7nm is
roughly equivalent to Intel's 10nm like that somehow scores points for
Intel... even though Intel hasn't been able to ship their 10nm process for
shit.

So no matter how you slice it Intel has fallen behind.

------
dstaley
I mean, Huawei was technically correct when they announced it was the first.
However, it's now clear that the A12 Bionic will be the first shipping 7nm
SoC, and I think it's fair for Apple to claim it's the first 7nm SoC in a
smartphone.

~~~
mi_lk
What does SoC stand for?

~~~
casylum
System on chip. It usually refers to a cpu with integrated devices such as
GPU, memory controller, camera interface, wireless, etc.

------
sschueller
Apple and Huawei don't have any fabs, TSMC makes them for both.

A better title would be "TSMC first to manufacture 7nm smartphone chip,
Samsung close behind while Intel is playing catchup."

~~~
mmmBacon
I think you are underestimating the challenges involved in moving to a new
node and designing to a new node. Just last year, a lot of other companies
were on the fence saying 7nm was not ready.

TSMC doesn't just invest in 7nm with a build it and they will come philosophy.
I'm sure Apple and Huawei were both instrumental in bringing 7nm to market.
Global Foundries has dropped out of the advanced node game and Intel is
struggling to maintain parity.

Hurray to all of them for a tremendous achievement.

~~~
nv-vn
AMD is launching 7nm soon on the TSMC process but I recall them saying that
they intend to use GF as well within 6 months of launch. So it seems like GF
7nm may also beat Intel's 10nm to market.

~~~
vlangber
Global Foundries have dropped 7nm..
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-
stops-a...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-
all-7nm-development)

------
thoughtsimple
Who ships a phone with the 7nm chip first? I’ll have to get the exact quote
but I think Apple said first 7nm chip in a phone. When is Huawei’s phone
shipping? Apple’s is here in 2 weeks.

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colechristensen
Now we're in the neighborhood of 1-10nm, putting one number on the feature
size doesn't mean much. It's just marketing.

Once people start paying attention to a metric it gradually stops meaning
anything. Feature size in semiconductors has hit the point where nobody should
really care.

~~~
postalrat
Did the jump from 28 to 14 mean more than 14 to 7?

~~~
AgentOrange1234
I am by no means an expert but I think the answer is yes. As I understand it,
as we shrink smaller we run into greater leakage costs even when the devices
aren’t switching. This is probably not a completely correct answer.

------
arez
Does anyone know where we're heading next? Will there be a slowdown of
performance increase the next years? Did we hit a barrier?

~~~
snaky
That happened long ago. Low power cores - done. Specialized coprocessors -
more and more of them (from VPU to AI and whatnot). Universal coprocessors -
Apple has FPGA on board since iPhone 7 (iCE5LP4K).

~~~
ktta
Would you mind sharing a source for this?

~~~
cududa
There isn't really one particular source. Just kind of been something
happening about and written about in numerous forms over the last few years

~~~
ktta
I was referring to the presence of an FPGA on the iPhone. There doesn't seem
to be a good source on what they're actually used for. Just that they're
there.

~~~
snaky
[http://www.techinsights.com/about-
techinsights/overview/blog...](http://www.techinsights.com/about-
techinsights/overview/blog/apple-iphone-7-teardown/)

------
endorphone
_According to Apple, the neural engine can perform 5 trillion operations per
second—an eight-fold boost—and consumes one-tenth the energy of its previous
incarnation_

Sidenote, but the claim by Apple seemed to be that those apps that use CoreML
will see such an efficiency boost in their ML tasks, as CoreML did not use the
neural circuitry on the A11 Bionic, and it was restricted to system tasks. Not
sure if the opening of the A12's neural processing means that CoreML will be
altered to also use the A11's functionality.

------
kolencherry
Wouldn't Apple technically be the first to mass-market with a 7nm SoC?

~~~
Bud
Not just technically. There's nothing complex or "technical" about it. Huawei
is announcing something they are not even close to shipping. Apple will be
first, period.

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gumby
"nm" is the new "pixels" (which was the new "MHz"\-- a marketing buzzword
sought after though non-understood by enthusiasts.

The other day I heard someone discussing FinFET who clearly didn't know what a
FET is, but didn't really know what a transistor is.

Oh but I need the new shiny.

------
Havoc
Why don't say intel laptop chips use that approach of say 4 high perf cores
and 4 low perf efficiency cores?

I get that they dynamically adjust the frequency but surely cellphones can do
that too?

~~~
foobarbazetc
How would any software know which CPU to use?

Apple controls the entire OS and SoC so they can schedule different tasks onto
different classes of CPU.

~~~
seabrookmx
The Linux thread scheduler already knows how to do this, which is why ARM's
big.LITTLE architecture works fine in Android phones.

There's zero reason MS couldn't implement this in Windows. In fact, it might
already be done giving HP and others are currently shipping Windows on
Snapdragon devices.

~~~
foobarbazetc
I hadn’t looked at the sched code in a couple of years. Is this article up to
date:

[https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/ten-
things...](https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/ten-things-to-
know-about-big-little)

?

~~~
seabrookmx
I believe that patch referenced in the article for "global task scheduling"
that allows you to use both the big and little cores at once is now in the
mainline kernel. But I don't recall where I read this so apply a few grains of
salt to my comment.

------
Brosper
Who cares who was first?

