Posted on Wednesday, May 13 2009 @ 3:26 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
heard TSMC's 40nm and 45nm process technology won't account for a lot of shipments this year, market watchers expect just 8-10 percent of the foundry's shipments will use these new process technologies by the end of this year. By the second quarter of 2010 the 40nm and 45nm utilization is expected to climb to 15-20 percent of total sales.
TSMC has seen rising proportion of sales from its 40/45nm, thanks to increased orders for FPGA chips, PC graphics processors and handset baseband solutions from major clients Altera, Nvidia and Qualcomm, said the observers.
The world's top contract chipmaker recently spent several billion Taiwan dollars on new equipment to be added to its 12-inch fabs.
TSMC said revenues from 40/45nm reached 1% of its total wafer sales in the first quarter of 2009, whereas those from 90nm and 60nm accounted for 48% in total. The foundry said about 60 customers will tape out 100 chips at 40/45nm by the end of this year, but it did not elaborate.
