We know TSMC's energy-miser 28-nanometer manufacturing process has a lot of headroom, but the company just ratcheted expectations up by a few notches. Lab workers at Taiwan's semiconductor giant have successfully run a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor at 3.1GHz under normal conditions. That's a 55 percent higher clock speed than the 2GHz maximum that TSMC normally offers, folks, and about twice as fast as a 40nm chip under the same workload. Don't expect that kind of clock speed from your next smartphone or tablet, though:
