Now let’s look at the transistors.Īnd we do have finFETS! This section is parallel to the fins, and across the gates. The Exynos 7420 uses 11 layers of metal, as you can see from the die seal cross-section above. Our guys in the lab made their usual exceptional effort in enabling us to see what the process looks like – within a few hours of getting the phone in-house, we have a decapsulated part and a cross-sectional sample under the microscope. We’ll have to wait until we see the floorplan to see how much functionality the two parts have in common. If the 7420 was a straight shrink of the 5433, we’d expect it to be 55 – 60 mm^2, but the back-end metallization stack is reported to be similar to the 20-nm planar process, so a full 50% shrink is unlikely (and the analog regions never shrink as well as digital anyway). The functional die size is ~78 mm^2, which compares well with the 118.3 mm^2 of the Snapdragon chip used in the Galaxy S5, and the 113 mm^2 size of the 20-nm Exynos 5433. Now we have a die photograph and the die mark. And there are lots of rumours about Qualcomm using the Samsung 14-nm process. Could ALB be short for Albany (NY)? Is the G in the lot code short for GLOBALFOUNDRIES? That all seems rather unlikely, but if Samsung wants to switch on the volume quickly in anticipation of huge volumes for the S6, what better way than to use three fabs? They did sound very confident in their last quarterly analyst call, saying that they expect 14-nm to be 30% of the LSI line capacity by year end. Which leads me into the speculation that maybe the 7420 is out of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, rather than a Samsung fab in Korea or Texas. Clearly the STMicroelectronics solution was a good one for Samsung as they have chosen it again for the Galaxy S6. This is not a complete surprise to us as we had seen earlier Samsung making use of STMicroelectronics touch screen solution inside the Galaxy Note Neo 3 models in the middle of last year. We see the Galaxy S6 using an STMicroelectronics Touch Screen Controller. Now we not only have the APU and memory, but also the modem, two PMICs (power management ICs), an RF transceiver chip, an envelope tracking IC, likely the NFC controller, and an image processor (and a Samsung Electro-Mechanics Wi-Fi module). Samsung is continuing the trend of introducing their own silicon into their phones. Texas Instruments BQ51221 Single Chip Wireless Power Receiver.N5DDPS2 (Likely Samsung NFC Controller (P/N needs to be confirmed).Samsung Electro-Mechanics 3853B5 Wi-Fi Module.Maxim MAX98505 Class DG Audio Amplifier and Maxim MAX77843 Companion PMIC.Avago AFEM-9020 PAM and Avago ACPM-7007 PAM.Skyworks SKY78042 Multimode Multiband (MMMB) Front-End Module (FEM).InvenSense MPU-6500 Gyro + Accelerometer.Samsung Shannon 333 Modem, Shannon 533 PMIC, Samsung S2MPS15 PMIC, Samsung Shannon 928 RF Transceiver and Samsung Shannon 710 Envelope Tracking IC. Samsung K3RG3G30MM-DGCH 3Gb LPDDR4 SDRAM and Samsung KLUBG4G1BD 32GB NAND Flash.We’ve been able to identify multiple chips inside the Galaxy S6:
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