IBM and its joint development partners - AMD, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon and Samsung - have extended their cooperation to the 32nm process. The firms claim they will be able to manufacture 32nm chips in the second half of 2009:
IBM and its partners have been working on high-k/metal gate technology for the 45-nm node. It's unclear if that technology is in production at the 45-nm node. No announcements have been made in the arena.
Intel Corp., however, is in production with 45-nm processors, based on its high-k technology, it was noted.
IBM's 32-nm approach is based on a so-called "high-k gate-first" process. This new approach to implementing high-k/metal gate will be available to IBM's alliance members and their clients in the second half of 2009.
In January of 2007, IBM and its research partners rolled out a "high-k/metal gate" technology. Rival Intel also announced a similar technology, based on a replacement gate technique.
