6-core 16nm FinFET ARM Cortex-A57 chips spotted in the wild

MWC 2014: Not just one, a full wafer of them fresh from the oven
Charlie Demerjian, SemiAccurate
Mar 3, 2014

What do you get when you put a 6-core ARM A57 on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process? A lot of pretty pictures and a really big bunch of test chips to play with too.

At MWC last week, SemiAccurate spotted a nice A57 wafer hidden away in the ARM booth. Not much was said about it other than 16nm, TSMC, and A57 cores all of which, “Taped-out February, 2014″. That means it is as fresh tasting as it is pretty.

If you look at the wafer below, it is pretty obvious that there are six cores on the die plus a bunch of other test structures. This is a test chip after all, and the purpose is to optimize the A57 core for the upcoming process, and given the time from tape-out, it is hot from the oven. This means the work on the process is still ongoing and likely far from done.

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