Samsung will describe the first mobile applications processor to use ARM's big.little concept at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in February.

Rayfield worked for the past seven years as the vice president and general manager of Nvidia's Mobile Business Unit where his team created advanced computer on a chip technology and won key mobile industry reference designs.

A top Nvidia engineer is calling for a move to 450mm wafers as one part of the solution to the growing complexity, cost and time-to-market challenges in chip design.

What's surprising are Nvidia's remarks concerning TSMC's current cost curves and manufacturing ramps. This is normally the sort of information discussed quietly between a foundry and its customers or by the press with help from various anonymous sources. Discussing the problems publicly is a sign of just how frustrated the company has become.

"Why not be a foundry for all the mobile companies?" Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told a group of reporters Wednesday evening. "There's no shame in that."

It seems as if Nvidia is having difficulty manufacturing its upcoming Kepler GPU lineup due to a supply shortage at TSMC that has been linked to internal (TSMC) 28nm issues.

Rumors surfaced online today that claim TSMC has pulled the plug on their 28nm manufacturing lines and that the company started to test and tune the machines to improve yields.