TSMC pushes 28-nm Cortex-A9 to 3.1-GHz
Peter Clarke 5/3/2012 5:39 AM EDT
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4372207/TSMC-pushes-Cortex-A9
LONDON – Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has announced it has made a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor test chip in its 28-nm high-performance mobile CMOS process that it has run at a 3.1-GHz clock frequency under typical operating conditions.
TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) said that this achievement demonstrates that the 28-nm HPM process is ready for use in a broad range of mobile, consumer and enterprise applications.
For mobile application signoff conditions the 28HPM process delivers clock frequencies in the range 1.5-GHz to 2.0-GHz, TSMC said.
But for high performance requirements it can be run up to 3.1-GHz the company said.
This could either for very short term use or where power consumption is less critical because a system is connected to a main supply of electricity.
The 28HPM implementation runs twice as fast as the 40-nm counterpart made by TSMC under the same operating conditions, according to Cliff Hou, vice president of R&D at TSMC.
Related links and articles:
ARM tips availability of ‘Seahawk’ A15 hard macro
ARM launches processor pack for big-little on TSMC 28-nm
Amlogic offers dual-core Cortex-A9 for consumer SoCs
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