Posted on Friday, October 30 2009 @ 16:49 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
reports TSMC is suffering again from poor yields on its 40nm process. Chairman and CEO Morris Chang promises the issue will be solved within this quarter.
TSMC said it has seen yield rates for its 40nm node drop to 40% due chamber matching issues. Main customers for TSMC's 40nm processes are GPU vendors AMD, which recently launched its new 40nm-based Radeon 5870 series, and Nvidia, who is scheduled to launch its 40nm-based GT300 series of chips in December, according to previous reports. TSMC's recent issues may impact the shipping schedules of the GPU vendors, market watchers commented.
During TSMC's July 2009 investors conference, Chang revealed that yield rates for 40nm processes had improved to 60%, up from as low as 20-30% in the second quarter of 2009.
