Date: 28/10/2011

28nm chips from TSMC are in volume shipment

Leading semiconductor fab TSMC has announced that its 28nm process is in volume production and production wafers have been shipped to customers. TSMC's 28nm process offering includes 28nm High Performance (28HP), 28nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL), 28nm Low Power (28LP), and 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM). Among these technology offerings, 28HP, 28HPL and 28LP are all in volume production and 28HPM is expected to be ready for production by the end of this year.

TSMC has reported growth in customer numbers at 28nm compared to 40nm. While moving the 28nm to volume production TSMC has already made test chips deeper nodes such as 20nm, while the 14nm chips are expected in 2015, as per reports. TSMC is also moving 450-mm wafer while moving in deeper nodes. Double pattering and finfets are the ways ahead after the 28nm node semiconductor technology.

FPGA makers Xilinx, Altera, and graphic processor chipmakers such as AMD, NVIDIA and fabless leader Qualcomm are expected to be some the early customers of TSMC in 28nm node. TSMC has reported 28nm tape-outs for 80 customers

Open Innovation Platform (OIP) is offered by TSMC for its partners and customers to get on to the band wagon of 28nm node which will soon land in 20nm node.

It is predicted that 28nm node going to be a game changing node in semiconductor industry, mainly FPGA domain.
Xilinx stated in its release it has shipped thousands of Virtex-7 and Kintex-7 FPGAs worldwide, addressing a diverse set of applications, ranging from high performance defense RADAR systems and next-generation 200G wired communication bridges to ultra-high resolution medical imaging equipment and cutting edge test and measurement equipment.