TSMC has a lot of capacity. Not just that, it has a lot more under construction. It currently has 3 300mm Gigafabs, fabs 12,14 and 15 (there doesn’t seem to be a 13). This morning, Dr Wang, who is TSMC’s VP of 300mm operations told us about the expansion plans. Currently fab 15 phase 3 and 4, and fab 12 phase 3 are to be ramped… Read More
FinFET Design Challenges Exposed!
The first mention of FinFETs appeared on SemiWiki after the ISSCC conference in 2011. Dr. Jack Sun, TSMC Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer, spoke about the power crisis the semiconductor industry is facing and FinFETs was one of the promising technologies that could help us. Since then, we have posted 100+ … Read More
TSMC to Talk About 10nm at Symposium Next Week
Given the compressed time between 20nm and 16nm, twelve months versus the industry average twenty four months, it is time to start talking about 10nm, absolutely. Next Tuesday is the 19th annual TSMC Technology Symposium keynoted of course by the Chairman, Dr. Morris Chang.
Join the 2013 TSMC Technology Symposium. Get the latest… Read More
TSMC Tapes Out First 64-bit ARM
TSMC announced today that together with ARM they have taped out the first ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit processor on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET technology. The two companies cooperated in the implementation from RTL to tape-out over six months using ARM physical IP, TSMC memory macros, and a commercial 16nm FinFET tool chain enabled by… Read More
Samsung 28nm Still Does Not Yield?
As if Samsung didn’t have enough to worry about with their new neighbor to the North (Korea) declaring war, Samsung 28nm is still NOT yielding. In my previous blog “Can Samsung Deliver as Promised?” I wondered what will power the new Galaxy S4 phones that Samsung has been aggressively marketing. You would think it would be a 28nm version… Read More
Mentor at TSMC Technology Symposium
TSMC will host their annual technology symposium at several locations in the U.S. on April 9th in San Jose, April 16th in Austin, and April 23rd in Boston. TSMC will discuss the market outlook, design enablement, and technology for high-speed computing, mobile communications, connectivity and storage, CIS, embedded flash, … Read More
TSMC on Collaboration: JIT Ecosystem Development
Cliff Hou of TSMC gave the keynote today at SNUG on Collaborate to Innovate: a Foundry’s Perspective. Starting around 45nm the way that a foundry has to work with its ecosystem fundamentally changed. Up until then, each process generation was similar enough to the previous one, apart obviously from size, that it could be … Read More
Synopsys ♥ TSMC!
Dr. Paul McLellan and I will be covering the Silicon Valley SNUG live again this year. Unfortunately we are only allowed to see the keynotes (same thing with CDNLive) but they look very good:
Keynote Address: Massive Innovation and Collaboration into the “GigaScale” Age!
Aart de Geus, Chairman and co-CEO, Synopsys,… Read More
Qualcomm and Intel Dynasty Scenario at 14nm
At a different time, but certainly within the past 12 months, Paul Otellini was asked if Intel would be a Foundry for Qualcomm. His reply was that it did not leave a good taste in his mouth. Nevertheless it was not rejected and the door that remained open just a crack is likely to swing open for Qualcomm, the premier mobile silicon supplier… Read More
TSMC ♥ Cadence
In a shocking move TSMC now favors Cadence over Synopsys! Okay, not so shocking, especially after the Synopsys acquisitions of Magma, Ciranova, SpringSoft, and the resulting product consolidations. Not shocking to me at all since my day job is Strategic Foundry Relationships for emerging EDA, IP, and fabless companies.
Rick… Read More