TSMC begins 7nm Process Volume Production

[Taf the Ghost]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume-production-of-7nm-chips

Quote

TSMC last week announced that it had started high volume production (HVM) of chips using their first-gen 7 nm (CLN7FF) process technology. The contract maker of semiconductors says it has over a dozen of customers with tens of designs eager to use the technology to make their integrated circuits.

 

The 7 nm node is a big deal for the foundry industry in general and TSMC in particular. When compared to the CLN16FF+ technology (TSMC’s most widely used FinFET process technology) the CLN7FF will enable chip designers to shrink their die sizes by 70% (at the same transistor count), drop power consumption by 60%, or increase frequency by 30% (at the same complexity). So far, TSMC has taped out 18 customer products using the CLN7FF technology, more than 50 CLN7FF products will be taped out by the end of 2018.

 

Quote

“So far, we have already favored out more than 18 customer products with good yield [and] performance,” said C. C. Wei, a Co-CEO and President of TSMC, during a conference call with financial analysts. “More than 50 products tape-outs has been planned by end of this year from applications across mobile, server CPU, network processor, gaming, GPU, PGA, cryptocurrency, automotive and AI. Our 7nm is already in volume production.”

News is actually from yesterday, which surprised me that it hadn't made it into the forum. This is definitely one of those "big deal" announcements. With all of the trouble that the foundries have been dealing with in the last 10 years of nodes, this is going to be a fairly sizable move for the entire industry. By TSMC's own numbers, the move from 16FF+ node (Nvidia's Pascal is on this node) to 7FF is over a 70% area reduction. (Same number of transistors fits in 30% of the previous space. That's a massive improvement.) 

 

There are also a few other important areas this effects. We've had those PS5 rumors running around, and both the Xbox & PS4 are manufactured by TSMC using AMD designs. If 7nm node is in high volume production, then a PS5 could actually launch this year. The other really interesting tidbit is the part I bolded about "server CPU". Is this going to be Qualcomm CPUs for ARM servers, or are we going to see AMD moving Zen2 production to TSMC? This level of area shrink & performance uplift means the next 2 years of products should see a large jump in performance. 

 

Last important possibility that comes to mind is that Nvidia will be skipping their 12nm node (customized for them for Volta) and moving to 7nm for their next GPUs, which would launch later in the year. 

[GDRRiley]

I wonder if Epyc 2 will just be on 7nm or if the entire ryzen 2 will be. 

[xentropa]

16 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I wonder if Epyc 2 will just be on 7nm or if the entire ryzen 2 will be. 

I think AMD mostly uses GloFo.  They are stuck with them til 2022 *Nelson laugh*

 

TSMC's 7nm node is the same as Intel's 10nm node in terms of design rules.

[Taf the Ghost]

12 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I wonder if Epyc 2 will just be on 7nm or if the entire ryzen 2 will be. 

Zen2 or Ryzen 3000 will be on 7nm, we just don't know if it's going to be with TSMC or Global Foundries. Everyone has assumed GloFo, but we don't know. We also saw a rumor that AMD would hold out until the last possible moment to comment to a foundry for a product. So, there is that.

[Drak3]

14 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I wonder if Epyc 2 will just be on 7nm or if the entire ryzen 2 will be. 

All of Zen 2 will be 7nm. Ryzen 2 is 14nm+/12nm, and Epyc might get the same treatment.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

All of Zen 2 will be 7nm. Ryzen 2 is 14nm+/12nm, and Epyc might get the same treatment.

Should do, EPYC is just multi die of what ever is the current design at the time they refresh the EPYC product stack. Being a server CPU they won't do it unless there is a significant change, stability over incremental performance increases pretty much.

[Drak3]

Just now, leadeater said:

Should do, EPYC is just multi die of what ever is the current design at the time they refresh the EPYC product stack. Being a server CPU they won't do it unless there is a significant change, stability over incremental performance increases pretty much.

If Level1Techs is to be believed, Zen+ is as stable at launch as Zen is now, outside of the IMC. The IMC can handle higher frequencies now, when paired with a board rocking an updated chipset. That incremental performance increase might not mean a sacrifice to stability.

Zen+ is, after all, essentially a fine tuning to Zen on all possible fronts.

 

So I do kind of expect an EPYC II. I also expect Roman Numerals.

[Razor01]

39 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume-production-of-7nm-chips

 

News is actually from yesterday, which surprised me that it hadn't made it into the forum. This is definitely one of those "big deal" announcements. With all of the trouble that the foundries have been dealing with in the last 10 years of nodes, this is going to be a fairly sizable move for the entire industry. By TSMC's own numbers, the move from 16FF+ node (Nvidia's Pascal is on this node) to 7FF is over a 70% area reduction. (Same number of transistors fits in 30% of the previous space. That's a massive improvement.) 

 

There are also a few other important areas this effects. We've had those PS5 rumors running around, and both the Xbox & PS4 are manufactured by TSMC using AMD designs. If 7nm node is in high volume production, then a PS5 could actually launch this year. The other really interesting tidbit is the part I bolded about "server CPU". Is this going to be Qualcomm CPUs for ARM servers, or are we going to see AMD moving Zen2 production to TSMC? This level of area shrink & performance uplift means the next 2 years of products should see a large jump in performance. 

 

Last important possibility that comes to mind is that Nvidia will be skipping their 12nm node (customized for them for Volta) and moving to 7nm for their next GPUs, which would launch later in the year. 

Well it could be right, interesting that this came about only about 12 months after the wafer signing deal with GF.

 

Not sure about nV though, they aren't pressured to go that aggressive on the node, and what ever they have planned they already have done, rumor has it TSMC is not producing the gaming GPU's of Volta.

[ARikozuM]

13 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

If Level1Techs is to be believed, Zen+ is as stable at launch as Zen is now, outside of the IMC. The IMC can handle higher frequencies now, when paired with a board rocking an updated chipset. That incremental performance increase might not mean a sacrifice to stability.

Zen+ is, after all, essentially a fine tuning to Zen on all possible fronts.

 

So I do kind of expect an EPYC II. I also expect Roman Numerals.

I expect misspellings. My vote goes to EPYC To. 

Spoiler

They had a 66% chance of choosing the correct "2", but their ineptitude with dictionaries... SMH

 

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

misspellings.

ENGRISH HARD GOD DAMN IT.

 

 

AND WOULD YOU RIKE TO AH TRY OUR SHITTY CHICKEN

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

Well it could be right, interesting that this came about only about 12 months after the wafer signing deal with GF.

 

Not sure about nV though, they aren't pressured to go that aggressive on the node, and what ever they have planned they already have done, rumor has it TSMC is not producing the gaming GPU's of Volta.

Nvidia went to Samsung for a fab? That'd be really interesting.

 

As for the WSA between GloFo & AMD, I get the feeling everyone was assuming they'd kept CPUs at GloFo and GPUs split between any of TSMC, Samsung or GloFo depending on which node worked best for them. Given GloFo has taken up IBM's foundry, it's kind of the assumption that CPUs would likely work best at GloFo. We'll obviously see, but AMD actually produces more GPUs at TSMC than GloFo right now, given the PS4 & Xbox.

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

If Level1Techs is to be believed, Zen+ is as stable at launch as Zen is now, outside of the IMC.

Was more talking about product stack stability than the product itself. Having different CPU architectures between servers is actually quite a problem when it comes to things like ESXi clusters as you have to set lowest common denominator CPU feature support meaning newer CPUs act like older ones or VMs can't fail between certain hosts. 

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Was more talking about product stack stability than the product itself. Having different CPU architectures between servers is actually quite a problem when it comes to things like ESXi clusters as you have to set lowest common denominator CPU feature support meaning newer CPUs act like older ones or VMs can't fail between certain hosts. 

Besides StoreMI, are there any feature differences?

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Nvidia went to Samsung for a fab? That'd be really interesting.

I think the lower end GTX 1030/1050/1050Ti products are currently produced by Samsung on their 14nm process.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Besides StoreMI, are there any feature differences?

Not sure but ESXi will pick up that it's a newer CPU arch and it's a restriction at that level rather than the CPUs being that different. ESXi clusters usually have identical only hardware in them, you either create a new cluster for new hardware or over a short period of time swap out the hardware till it's all new then set the EVC mode on the cluster to that new CPU arch level.

[Razor01]

31 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Nvidia went to Samsung for a fab? That'd be really interesting.

 

As for the WSA between GloFo & AMD, I get the feeling everyone was assuming they'd kept CPUs at GloFo and GPUs split between any of TSMC, Samsung or GloFo depending on which node worked best for them. Given GloFo has taken up IBM's foundry, it's kind of the assumption that CPUs would likely work best at GloFo. We'll obviously see, but AMD actually produces more GPUs at TSMC than GloFo right now, given the PS4 & Xbox.

 

Yeah as @leadeater stated they already produce GPU's at Samsung, I don't know how true the rumor is that nV is not using TSMC for their gaming GPU's next round but so far haven't seen anything contradictory to that.

 

WSA aside, just a few days ago we were talking about GF 7nm might be having issues lol, Anandtech feels GF is behind TSMC 7nm.  Maybe those rumors aren't so off after all?

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

 

Yeah as @leadeater stated they already produce GPU's at Samsung, I don't know how true the rumor is that nV is not using TSMC for their gaming GPU's next round but so far haven't seen anything contradictory to that.

 

WSA aside, just a few days ago we were talking about GF 7nm might be having issues lol, Anandtech feels GF is behind TSMC 7nm.  Maybe those rumors aren't so off after all?

We'll know when companies start announcing Volume Production. It doesn't help that the main design companies are being cagey about what projects are going where. GloFo's 7nm is for launching in 2019, that's from their own statements. TSMC is first out of the gate, Samsung is being Samsung (so, 2019) and Intel is clearly in the "everything is fine" mode for now.

 

In related news: 

https://twitter.com/TMFChipFool/status/989361237568966658

 

Jim Keller is apparently being hired by Intel. Talk about doing the entire circuit of companies.

 

As for 7nm:

 

https://twitter.com/2901bitslice/status/989275561364082688

Quote

From the AMD Teleconference Lisa Su was asked about the confidence AMD has with TSMC as a supplier of the 7nm Epyc products. Lisa responded that AMD would use both TSMC and Global Foundries for it 7nm products and TSMC would go first. Lisa also said AMD has confidence in TSMC.

The question is likely a wrong assumption about Zen for TSMC, but TSMC first is interesting. The products we know about are Vega on 7nm, which is GloFo, something called "Vega 20" somewhere at the end of the year, and the possible PS5 project. If TSMC is up first, then it's almost a given it's going to be this year. Are we going to see a huge chunk of new products for Christmas 2018? Could be a wild H2.

[Doobeedoo]

Exciting node jump. Next year products will be very interesting to see. The power/performance curve as well and specially clock speeds. 

[yian88]

Finally some good news i guess, cant wait for cpu/gpu 7nm and their new arch next year.

Somehow news has become sinonimous with bad news.

[DocSwag]

9 hours ago, xentropa said:

I think AMD mostly uses GloFo.  They are stuck with them til 2022 *Nelson laugh*

 

TSMC's 7nm node is the same as Intel's 10nm node in terms of design rules.

It's not that they're stuck with them, just that using other fabs requires paying glofo. It seems that amd is in fact using Tsmc 7nm for some gpus...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-earnings-call-tsmc-7nm-gpu,36957.html

Quote

Better yet, AMD is forecasting 50% YoY revenue growth for the next quarter and 20% revenue growth for the year, which suggests the company is just hitting its stride. The company is also busy plotting a course for the future: it already has 7nm GPUs in its labs fabbed on TSMC's silicon and 7nm EPYC 2 processors in development. 

 

[xentropa]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

It's not that they're stuck with them, just that using other fabs requires paying glofo. It seems that amd is in fact using Tsmc 7nm for some gpus...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-earnings-call-tsmc-7nm-gpu,36957.html

 

 

I think their GPU's have lighter restrictions since ATi (the GPU company they acquired) were not subject to the same constraints.  But that's a relief.

 

Nobody with more than half a brain working would choose GloFo over TSMC.  Has GloFo learned to turn a profit yet, or are they still just siphoning back those Petrol dollars from Abu Dhabi as they ship out wafers wrapped in dollar bills?

[Guest The Viking]

Kirin 980 from HiSilicon is expected to be 7nm. HiSilicon uses TSMC for their SoCs.

 

They've already started production of the Kirin 980 for end of year.

[BuckGup]

Faster more efficient mining you said?

[ravenshrike]

16 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Zen2 or Ryzen 3000 will be on 7nm, we just don't know if it's going to be with TSMC or Global Foundries. Everyone has assumed GloFo, but we don't know. We also saw a rumor that AMD would hold out until the last possible moment to comment to a foundry for a product. So, there is that.

It might be that the PS5 is actually coming out within the next year, in which case depending on form factor they might be keeping all console production at TSMC and using GloFo for the PC side of things.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, ravenshrike said:

It might be that the PS5 is actually coming out within the next year, in which case depending on form factor they might be keeping all console production at TSMC and using GloFo for the PC side of things.

The console makers are the ones that choose the Foundry, to my knowledge, which is why both the Xbox & PS4 are produced at TSMC.