TSMC 28nm hits mass production, GTX 560 Ti refresh coming

TSMC announced this week that it has commenced volume production of 28nm silicon and the first wafers have already been shipped to customers. TSMC's 28nm process comes in several variants: High Performance (28HP), 28nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL), 28nm Low Power (28LP), and 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM). The first three are in volume production while the last will reach that stage by the end of 2011, though most notebook makers have a production build of 28HPM for design purposes. TSMC noted that the 28nm rollout is a bigger deal than 2008's 40nm milestone.

"The number of customer 28nm production tape outs has more than doubled as compared with that of 40nm. At 28nm, there are currently more than 80 customer product tape-outs. The TSMC 28nm process has surpassed the previous generation's production ramps and product yield at the same point in time due to closer and earlier collaboration with customers." Both AMD and Nvidia will utilize the 28nm fabrication tech in their next-generation graphics card. The former camp is expected to ship its Southern Islands products before the end of this year while the latter's Kepler GPUs should arrive shortly thereafter.

Before that happens, Nvidia reportedly plans to launch an updated 40nm GeForce GTX 560 Ti for the holidays. The new card is said to drop the GF114 GPU in favor a diluted version of the GF110, which is currently used by the GTX 570 and580. The revamped GTX 560 Ti will pack 448 CUDA Cores, which is 64 more than now but still 32 and 64 less than its beefier siblings. Other rumored specs include 56 TMUs, a 320-bit memory interface, 1280MB of GDDR5 VRAM, and 3-way SLI support. Nvidia is expected to stuff the card somewhere between the Radeon HD 6950 2GB and the HD 6970 2GB, putting in the $300 territory.

AMD has stopped Phenom II X2, X4 production

The latest rumor regarding AMD claims that the company has already pulled the proverbial plug on the production run for their budget-minded Phenom II X2 and X4 processors.

The rumor comes courtesy of Kitguru who claims to have heard “something very interesting about AMD’s traditional CPU lines”, although at the end of the article the author hints that the rumor could possibly be self-generated. Valid or not, the story brings up some very good points about the present and future of AMD’s processor lineup.

It’s extremely likely that AMD has plenty of X2 and X4 processors in inventory and the same can be said for outlets across the globe. Odds are also high that AMD could indeed halt production on these lines today and still have enough stock to feed demand and cover warranty claims. Moving production away from these aging pieces of silicon would free up resources that could be used to manufacture next generation Fusion and Bulldozer CPUs.

It's worth noting that this jives with inside sources cited by DigiTimes in late June. At the time, it was reported that Athlon II chips would drop from 70% of AMD's total processor shipments in the second quarter to 40% in the third, 30% in the fourth and the series would be retracted by early 2012. Various Phenom II chips were pegged for a similar fate with X2, X4 and X6 parts expected to disappar over the next six to eight months.

AMD Fusion APUs have been in production since 2006 when the company acquired ATI. AMD released theBrazos mobile solution in February and followed it up with Llano in June.

The 8-core Bulldozer-based FX-8130P has already been publically benchmarked last month. In general, performance seems better than Intel's top Sandy Bridge offering. Early indications point to a September 19 release date for the new FX-series processors.

Socket AM2+ Phenom II chips have been in circulation since December 2008 with Socket AM3 chips finding their way to market in February 2009.

iPhone 5 production started, 4-inch screen and metal chassis

Reports have come out of Japan that indicate that the iPhone 5 has just started initial production and is slated for release in Q3 of this year. We all knew when the new iPhone 5 would be released, it’s usually about the same time each year but we didn’t know specific details about the phone. The new phone will come with a 4-inch capacitive touch screen as well as a metal chassis to help with antenna sensitivity. It looks like Apple is trying to correct the antenna issue that was uncovered as the iPhone 4 was released last year. The phone will also contain Apples A5 dual-core chip the same as which is inside the new iPad 2.

The new iPhone 5 is also said to be equipped with an “induction pay” or “wave and pay” technology that will allow consumers to use their phones to make purchases at establishments. This technology is made possible by the NFC or “Near Field Communication” chip installed in the phone. The technology is very similar to the current “pay pass” technology that we have on many credit cards today. With this addition to the iPhone 5, you will always be carrying around a sort of “e-wallet” that should speed up payments at enabled establishments. This new news also confirms many rumors that we wrote about earlier.

Samsung announces 20nm DDR 2.0 NAND chip production

Samsung Electronics today announced it has begun production of a high-performance toggle DDR 2.0 multi-level-cell (MLC) memory chip. The 64-gigabit MLC NAND flash chip is manufactured with 20nm-class process technology and can transmit data at a bandwidth of up to 400Mb/s (50MB/s). This provides a 10-fold increase over the 40Mb/s (5MB/s) SDR NAND widely used today, and a three-fold boost over 133Mb/s (16.6MB/s) toggle DDR 1.0, 32Gb NAND flash.

"With this Samsung is leading the market, which is evolving to fourth-generation smartphones and Serial ATA 6Gb/s SSDs," said executive VP of memory sales & marketing Wanhoon Hong. "We will continue to aggressively develop the world's most advanced toggle DDR NAND flash solutions with higher performance and density, since we see them as vital to enabling a greater diversity of services for mobile phone users worldwide."

The Korean company expects the availability of storage density as high as eight gigabytes (64Gb) in a single chip will trigger widespread acceptance of Toggle DDR-based high-performance flash in USB flash drives and SD cards, as well as smart phones and SSDs, replacing previous four gigabyte (32Gb) chips that Samsung started producing last year.

Back in April, SanDisk and Toshiba announced the world's first NAND flash memory chips manufactured using a 19nm process technology, which also use Toggle DDR2.0 to enhance data transfer speed. High-volume production planned for the second half of 2011, though, while Intel and Micron also have a 20nm 8GB (64Gb) part planned for production in that timeframe. According to IHS iSuppli, shipments of NAND flash memory with 64Gb or higher density are expected to account for approximately 70% of total NAND flash memory shipments in 2012.

Samsung starts mass production of transparent LCD panels

We've seen a number of cool display technology prototypes pop up at trade shows in the last couple of years, including curved, flexible and transparent screens by all the usual suspects. Today Samsung is not only showing off one of such innovations but also announcing it has actually begun mass production of a 22-inch transparent LCD panel.

Samsung’s new transparent displays will be available in two models: a black and white and a color version, both featuring a contrast ratio of 500:1 and resolution of 1680 x 1050 (WSXGA). The black and white model has the highest transparency rate at over 20% and the color model boasts a transparency rate of over 15% according to Samsung. Basically you can look through the panels like glass, and since they rely on ambient light instead of the usual back lighting, the transparent panels consume 90% less electricity than conventional LCD panels.

The company is touting the new panels' potential as advertising tools, which can be applied to show windows and outdoor billboards or used in showcase events. It also says corporations and schools could put the panels to use as an interactive communication device that enables information to be displayed more effectively.

There's no mention of pricing or worldwide availability in the press release. The applications for home and office users seem limited, though, so we assume it will still be a while before transparent panels make it onto our desktops.