TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium Overview Part 4

TSMC covered their specialty technologies in great detail. Specialty is what we inside the ecosystem used to call weird stuff meaning non-mainstream and fairly difficult to do on leading edge processes.  Specialty technologies will play an even more important part of semiconductor design with the advent of chiplets where die from specialty processes can be integrated with mainstream process die.

Specialty processes also fill fabs. As you can see TSMC is pushing heavily on N6RF to fill the N7 fabs. Here is the lengthy list of specialty accomplishments from the media kit:

TSMC offers the industry’s most comprehensive specialty technology portfolio, covering Power Management, RF, CMOS image sensing, and much more for a broad range of applications:

• Automotive
  • As the automotive industry moves toward autonomous driving, compute requirement is increasing at a very fast rate and needs the most advanced logic technology. By 2030, TSMC expects that 90% of all cars will have ADAS function, with L1, L2, and L2+/L3 each taking up 30% of that market.
  • In the past three years, TSMC rolled out ADEP (Automotive Design Enablement Platform) by offering industry-leading Grade-1 qualified N7A and N5A to unleash customers’ automotive innovation.
  • To give customers a head start on automotive product design before technology is auto-ready, TSMC introduced Auto Early as a steppingstone to enable an early design start and shorten product time-to-market.
    • N4AE, based on N4P, enables customers to start risk production in 2024.
    • N3AE serves as a steppingstone to N3A, which will be fully automotive qualified in 2025.
    • N3A, once qualified and released, will be the world’s most advanced automotive logic technology.
• Advanced RF Technologies for 5G & Connectivity
  • In 2021, TSMC released N6RF with best-in-class transistor performance, including speed and power efficiency, based on our record-setting 7nm logic technology.
  • Combining the superb RF performance and excellent 7nm logic speed and power efficiency, TSMC’s customers can enjoy 49% power reduction from an RF SoC chip with half digital and half analog thru migration from 16FFC to N6RF releasing the power budget of mobile devices to support other growing features.
  • Today, TSMC announced the most advanced RF CMOS technology, N4PRF, that will be released in the second half of 2023.
    • Offers 77X logic density increase and 45% logic power reduction under the same performance moving from N6RF.
    • 32% MOM cap density increase in N4PRF is offered when compared with its predecessor, N6RF.
• Ultra-Low Power
  • TSMC’s ultra-low power solutions continue to drive Vdd reduction to push power saving, which is essential to electronics.
  • With continued technology enhancement to lower minimum Vdd from 0.9V at 55ULP to less than 0.4V in N6e, TSMC offers a wide range of voltage operation to enable dynamic voltage scaling design for optimal power/performance.
  • TSMC’s coming N6e solution can provide around 9X logic density with >70% power reduction vs. the N22 solution, an attractive solution for wearables.
• MCU / Embedded Nonvolatile Memories
  • TSMC’s most advanced eNVM technology has progressed to 16/12nm FinFET-based technology, which allows customers to leverage superb performance in compute from FinFET transistors.
  • Due to the growing complexity of traditional floating gate-based eNVM or ESF3, TSMC has also heavily invested in new embedded memory technologies, such as RRAM and MRAM.
  • Both new technologies have now come to fruition, going into production at 22nm & 40nm nodes.
  • TSMC is planning for 6nm development
• RAM: Moved into 40/28/22RRAM production during the first quarter of 2022
  • TSMC’s 28RRAM is also progressing well, with reliable performance that is automotive capable.
  • TSMC is now developing the next generation 12RRAM, which is expected to be ready by the first quarter of 2024.
• MRAM: 22MRAM started production in 2020 for IoT applications. Now TSMC is working with customers to bring MRAM technology to future automotive applications and expects to qualify for automotive Grade 1 in the second quarter of 2023.
• CMOS Image Sensing
  • While the smartphone camera has been the main driving force of CMOS image sensing technology, TSMC expects that automotive cameras will drive the next wave of CIS growth.
  • To serve the future sensor requirements and achieve even more high-quality and intelligent sensing, TSMC has been working on multi-wafer stack solution, demonstrating new sensor architectures such as stacked pixel sensors, the smallest footprint for global shutter sensors, event-based RGB fusion sensors, and AI sensors with integrated memory.
•  Display
  • TSMC is focusing on higher resolution and lower power consumption for many new applications, driven by 5G, AI, and AR/VR.
  • The next generation high-end OLED panel will require more digital logic and SRAM content, and a faster frame rate. To address this need, TSMC is bringing its HV technology down to 28nm generation for better energy efficiency and higher SRAM density.
  • TSMC’s leading µDisplay on silicon technology can deliver up to 10X pixel density to achieve the higher resolution needed for near-eye displays like those used in AR and VR.

You can see more detailed descriptions of TSMC’s specialty offerings of MEMs Technology, CMOS Image Sensor, eFlash, MS/RF, Analog, HV, and BCD HERE.

Also Read:

TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium Overview Part 1

TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium Overview Part 2

TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium Overview Part 3

TSMC 2023 North America Technology Symposium Overview Part 5