The wheel of scientific and technological progress of mankind has made another twist - for the last week, Qualcomm and Xilinx began shipping chips produced in the Taiwanese factory TSMC using 20nm technology.

In the case of Qualcomm, we are talking about the supply of samples of the SoC Snapdragon 805. Unlike Snapdragon 800, the clock speed of the CPU cores is slightly increased (the same Krait cores, from 2.3 to 2.5 GHz), and the performance of the 3D graphics accelerator + 4k increased video. Serial deliveries and end devices - in the first half of 2014.

Xilinx also began delivering samples of its most advanced 20nm UltraScale FPGAs to partners, but datasheet could not be found on them yet. Delivery of samples for everyone (who has enough money for it) - also in the first quarter of 2014.
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By the end of 2014, TSMC plans to launch a total of 25 products using 20nm technology. And if the performance gains for the central processors are not promising to be impressive (there speed limits roughly speaking the large average length of conductors, not transistors), a significant increase will be on regular calculations (video cards and GPGPU).

A little about the differences in technology and marketing

The main difference from Intel's technology is that TSMC uses ordinary, planar transistors, while Intel uses FinFET when the gate surrounds the transistor from 3 sides - this is more complicated and more expensive to produce, but somewhat better in performance. TSMC plans to use FinFET in its 16nm process in the future.

You also need to remember that the "nanometers" is not so clearly reflect the "advanced" process technology, as it was in the days of the 180nm technology. So, it is possible to understand who is “cooler” - TSMC 20nm or Intel 22nm only when the results of opening 20nm chips from TSMC appear.

TSMC’s current superiority in marketing nanometers will continue until the second half of 2014, when Intel launches its new 14nm products to mass production. Also, Intel will use 14nm technology to produce Xilinx competitors - in 2014, 14nm Altera Stratix 10 - FPGA with 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores will be released. In general, the year promises to be stormy.

Qualcomm press release
Xilinx Press Release