IC design company is keen on 28nm process

Taiwan’s foundry giant TSMC’s chief executive said that the chip designers’ enthusiasm for 28 nm process products is extremely high, which is more than three times higher than the 40 nm process preparation phase.

“Smart phones and tablets are new killer applications,” said Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe. “We foresaw the explosion of 28nm designs. We already have 89 on the assembly line.

The product is finalized (tape-out, preparation of streaming program). Marced added that she said that TSMC currently has 90% of the world's 28nm product plans.

At the same time, the company's 28nm silicon has been shipped to some customers, Marced said. "The mobile Internet requires much lower power consumption under the same performance conditions." TSMC will also provide high-k metal gate (HKMG) and traditional polysilicon processes, and 20nm products are expected to start production in the second half of 2012.

However, TSMC is not prepared to deploy FinFET technology, which is said to be the gospel of mobile devices, before at least 14nm node will not. This strategy is different from Intel, Intel recently announced the application of a FinFET device called Tri-Gate Technology, using the company's 1270 process (ie 22nm process). Currently, the 1270 process is ready for mass production at Intel's F32 plant in the second half of the year (see the electronic engineering report: Intel has mass-produced 3D transistors in advance and entered the 22nm era).

This has led Intel to be a year or so ahead of TSMC in terms of process dimensions, and has led the way in the application of FinFET devices. It is reported that FinFET devices perform better in power consumption than planar transistors in these subtle sizes.

Marced said that since Intel is a vertically integrated company, it controls everything from design to manufacturing to testing, and the manufacturing and testing technologies that need to be introduced into FinFET devices can be implemented faster than TSMC. “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a foundry company that provides product designs to customers and therefore needs to have an ecosystem ready for FinFET devices, which means design tools, IP, design kits, etc. For us, 20nm will still be planar technology.”

Marced believes that one of the reasons why TSMC’s growth rate in the industrial sector in 2011 will exceed the overall foundry industry is the explosive growth of killer smartphones and tablets. TSMC’s goal is to increase revenue by 20% in 2011, and the overall industry growth is expected to be 15%. At the same time, the company estimates that the overall semiconductor market will only grow by 2%.