Items tagged with gate-last
Reports from multiple foundries suggest that the industry has had trouble ramping 28nm production, despite early bullish promises and repeated assurances. The situation is something of a high-tech 'I told you so.' As we've previously covered, each new process node has been an increasingly difficult shift as manufacturers have had to ramp new production technologies to build smaller parts. After TSMC's well-publicized problems ramping 40nm, it seemed unlikely that any foundry would be able to painlessly shift down to the 28nm node. Both GlobalFoundries and TSMC countered these rumors by detailing aggressive product ramps and, in TSMC's case, a separate 28nm process built using traditional SiON...
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At yesterday's Common Platform technology day, IBM and the other members of the Common Platform Initiative made a major announcement. While plans to use gate-first technology at the 32nm/28nm node remain unchanged, the coalition will move to gate-last technology when it makes the jump to 20nm production. As semiconductor manufacturing has moved to ever-smaller process nodes, the difficulty of managing each transition has increased markedly. As a result, the major foundries have adopted divers methods of improving product yields and minimizing gate leakage. Examples of these methods include AMD's adoption of immersion lithography at 45nm, Intel's simultaneous decision to use double-patterning...
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On September 1, GlobalFoundries played host to the first annual Global Technology Conference (GTC for short). While there were a fair number of partner presentations on display, the conference was primarily driven by GlobalFoundries executives and announcements. When we spoke to GlobalFoundries in March we remarked on the company's aggressive roadmap; we were curious to see if the company would still be on track six months later... GlobalFoundries Details Plans For 2011 And Beyond...
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On September 1, GlobalFoundries played host to the first annual Global Technology Conference (GTC for short). While there were a fair number of partner presentations on display, the conference was primarily driven by GlobalFoundries executives and announcements. When we spoke to GlobalFoundries in March we remarked on the company's aggressive roadmap; we were curious to see if the company would still be on track six months later. Based on comments made by company CEO Doug Grose, GlobalFoundries is on track to realize some $4 billion in revenue for the year 2010 and plans to double its size within two years (it's unclear if this refers to revenue, wafer starts, or customer base). The company's...
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