TSMC 28nm Technology in Volume Production
TSMC 28nm Technology in Volume Production
TSMC announced that its 28nm process is in volume production and production wafers have been shipped to customers. TSMC is the first foundry to provide such capabilities.
The company's 28nm process offering includes 28nm High Performance (28HP), 28nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL), 28nm Low Power (28LP), and 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM). The 28HP, 28HPL and 28LP are all in volume production while 28HPM will be ready for production by the end of this year. The production-version design collateral of 28HPM has been distributed to most mobile computing customers for their product-design use.
According to the company, its 28nm technology delivers twice the gate density of the 40nm process and also features an SRAM cell size shrink of 50%. The 28nm high performance (HP) process targets CPU, GPU, FPGA, PC, networking, and consumer electronics applications. The rest of the processes are used in telecommunication, mobile computing and wireless applications.
The customers who benefit from TSMC 28nm technology include NVIDIA and QualComm. The latter has yielded its Snapdragon S4 MSM8960, a highly-integrated, dual-core SoC designed to reduce power in cutting-edge smartphones and tablets. This SoC is manufactured using the 28LP process. The other customers who stand to leverage from TSMC breakthrough technology include AMD as it ships its next-generation discrete graphics products, and Altera who has delivered the industry’s first high-end 28nm FPGA.