Heck, I said it was going to be interesting, now didn't I?
I didn't expect it to be quite so fast though ......
http://liliputing.com/2013/04/first-arm-cortex-a57-chips-near-production-64-b...Do read the above link, keeping in mind that all of ARM's hard macro pre-built canned designs are always pre-run at TSMC to kill two birds at the same time -- to make the large crop of demo chipsets that get sent out to all the license holding folks so they have actual hardware to work with and so ARM can prove to everybody that their hard macro designs work as promised.
Hard macro designs are GUARANTEED in blood to be produce-able at xx cost and xx yield rates and are guaranteed to run xx fast and behave just like the sample chip you were provided to do all your final development work on.
No shite Sherlock -- the chip you were given was from an actual production run on the TSMC full production process. No wonder they can guarantee the results of your future runs will be just like this, or even slightly better as TSMC gets better at it.
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The slow, poky, post Steve Jobs Apple had better pull their thumb out of their butt pretty durn quick and get their 64 bit products out there or they are going to be lapped by the Chinese guys again ....
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Also note that these new chips are laptop grade processors, it sez so right in the text.
Also note that the process is capable of 16nm production, which means TSMC is capable of lapping an entire planned 20mn production generation, going directly down to 16nm. Intel, pay attention please.
No wonder Lenovo is slapping their sack of coins down now and saying "I want in NOW".
Watch for the sneaky Chinese guys to suddenly start shipping 64 bit A53 quads or hex or octa hard macro "little" chipsets out of the blue. That is what they have done twice now on two different ARM generations, soundly beating the big guys to the punch by six months or more by simply placing their production orders to directly follow the pre-production hard macro runs.
The production line exists, is manned and it has been proven out and it needs something to run, right?The early guys can design their I/O traces and structure their boards by the hard macro specs and KNOW it will work as promised as the chips are already production tested.
Speed to market is everything in the phone world.The A15 generation has just hit the 64 bit wall ..... and will very quickly be overcome by the least of the A57 generation sales wise.
Remember, a quad or hex or octa A53 chipset will always out-perform a dual core A57 set up cheaper/easier so don't expect anybody to do a dual core set up this time around.
Also, if the "sea of cores" thing is real you no longer have to have a matching number of little or big cores, you can tailor the combination of cores to fit the task at hand. Big/little becomes a mix and match to fit the customer requirements.
And, if you had a smart backbone, you could mix and match by adding cards of processors & matching memory.
AMD's chances of having something to sell before they spend their billion in liquid capital and go belly up just got somewhat better, provided they aren't sitting on their thumbs like Apple has been doing.
Conversely, since the Chinese are only months away from hard macro product designs and first production of saleable products, AMD is also at risk of seeing their opportunity filled by a Chinese firm that simply moves faster than AMD does.
Speed to market is everything in the phone world.