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Some interesting things were revealed in the UMC conference call this week. There is a big customer uptake of 28 nm, confirming a Digitimes rumour from a couple of weeks ago. Last year the uptake of UMC's 28nm process hit a brick wall at 11% of total revenue. The reason given was because TSMC offer 28 HPC and HPC+ and no one wants "vanilla" high-k 28nm anymore. To counter this UMC said they would develop their own 28nm HPC. Surprisingly, this new HPC process was not mentioned at all during the call. It's not clear if they implemented the new process or not, but they have seen a huge uptake in customer's orders. Next quarter 28nm will make up 15-18% of total revenue.
Also, interestingly they say their 14nm Finfet process is on track and will reach production in the second half of next year.
Earnings call: United Microelectronics (UMC) Q1 216 Results - Earnings Call Transcript | Seeking Alpha
results:UMC 1Q 216 Financial Results
When UMC and SMIC first started 28nm they used the gate-first approach. Both foundries then changed to a "T" like gate-last so they could be a viable second source to TSMC. SMIC and UMC both had a 28nm uptick last quarter so that business must be coming from TSMC?
If UMC has a "T" like FinFET process out next year that would be truly amazing. Second and third sourcing semiconductor manufacturing is a natural part of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem so the trailing edge FinFET customers would definitely take advantage of it.
