Late 2019, early 2020 high-end mobile chips will be 7nm
Huawei, Qualcomm, Apple
TSMC has announced that it is doing a test production of 5nm EUV chips, but real production starts in 2020. A long-term investigation leads us to believe that most chips launching in the latter part of this year or early next year will, unlike the UK, remain on 7nm.
The future brings 5G, AI, notchless screens and better cameras
The phone trends in 2019
There is a clear trend toward a whole uninterrupted screen for end users to enjoy on their phones and every year we are getting closer to that. The trend includes more cameras, slide, and pop-up, all helped by computation and AI.
Samsung S10, 10+, 5G and fold are a Qualcomm win
855, 5G, ultrasonic sensor
The Galaxy S10 series and the Galaxy Fold are the next chapter in Samsung’s history and the company decided to use multiple Qualcomm products to power the S10, 10+ and the Galaxy S10 5G.
Snapdragon X55 2nd gen 5G modem is out
7Gbps supports 2G to 5G
2019 is the year of real 5G and companies like Qualcomm are enabling at least 20+ operators, 20 OEM building 5G partners and 30+ commercial 5G products to launch. The X50 was announced in 2016 and shipping to partners for a while and will enable the first wave of 5G devices. Snapdragon X55 is enabling the missing features and complementing the 5G offering.
Snapdragon 855 is the only AP for 5G
From the house of Qualcomm
Next week will be a great leap forward in the 5G journey for the whole industry and we just wanted to set one thing straight. It turns out that Snapdragon 855 will be the only application processor SoC from Qualcomm for 5G phones and that 845 remains 4G only.
Radeon VII production cost $650+
Bill of Materials
Our original article about the HBM 2 cost gained a lot of traction and we decided to try to dig out how much the whole card BOM (bill of materials) might be.
Radeon VII 16GB HBM 2 memory cost around $320
Close to half of the MSRP
The marketing guys at AMD did a nice job naming the card Radeon VII (Roman 7) as it is a 7nm, launching on February 7 and costing $699 but our investigation shows that 16GB HBM 2 comes at a hefty price.
AMD has no plans to use chiplet design for next-gen APUs
Will use a different design similar to mobile parts
According to post-CES details showing up online, it appears that AMD will not use the same chiplet design for its next-gen APUs, keeping the chiplet design for its 2nd generation EPYC and 3rd generation Ryzen desktop CPUs.
AMD previews 3rd gen Ryzen at CES 2019
Up and running with Radeon VII
In addition to details regarding 2nd generation EPYC CPUs, AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, also gave a preview of its third generation Ryzen CPU.
Huawei sold 200 million phones
Went from 103M in three years
Huawei managed to sell 200 million smartphones in 2018 - a massive increase from 103 million in 2015 or just three million in 2010. As of the first half of this year, Huawei is the world’s second biggest smartphone manufacturer overtaking Apple and leaving Samsung in the prime position.