Posted on Thursday, January 26 2012 @ 19:24 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
EE Times
reports TSMC announced its 28nm process is not having significant problems and that it's doing better than its 40/45nm process did at an equivalent stage in its roll out:
Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe, repeated what has been said before by herself and other TSMC executives; that defect density reduction is on track for the 28-nm node and ahead of where TSMC was with 40/45-nm process technology at an equivalent stage in its roll out.
Marced did acknowledge that each process node roll out has problems but said TSMC engineers rise to the challenges. "Everything is getting more difficult. We have learned the lessons on 40-nm. We have put engineering teams on every tape-out to drive down defect density and drive up yields," she said. "It will be more difficult at 20-nm again, but still we see very good momentum."
Marced emphasized that momentum by saying that TSMC now has 36 ICs in production and 132 tape-outs in the pipeline. "The momentum on 28-nm is three times what it was on 40/45-nm," she said.
