TSMC 40nm yields still under 70 percent

Foundry chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), have been struggling to increase their yields on 40nm to over 70%, according to industry sources. The unsatisfactory yield rate has caused production for next-generation graphics processors and FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chips to run tight.

TSMC, at its last investors conference, revealed that chamber matching problems had impacted yield rates for its 40nm node. It said the problems could be solved by the end of 2009.

Clients using TSMC's 40nm node include GPU vendors AMD and Nvidia, and FPGA chip supplier Altera.