Foundries having issues with 28nm

Although foundry chip manufacturing will continue to grow faster than the overall chip market for the next few years, it is currently facing challenges at the leading-edge 28-nm manufacturing node, according to market analysis company Gartner and others.

In particular foundries are struggling with the introduction of 32-nm/28-nm high-K metal gate (HKMG) CMOS, according to Bob Johnson, research vice president at Gartner, speaking to a client meeting here.

"[Making] bulk silicon HKMG at 28-nm is hard. All foundries are having yield issues and defect density issues right now," he said, speaking along the same lines that executives at a couple of chip manufacturing equipment vendors had done a few days before.