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What flavour please?
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10/10/2008
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The semiconductor manufacturing industry has been following Moore’s Law faithfully for many years. The result has seen the number of transistors on a given area of silicon doubling every 18 months.
It’s interesting to look back and realise that only a decade ago, the ‘state of the art’ production technology was probably 0.18µm, moving to 0.13µm. Today, the leading edge production process is 40nm.
It could be argued that semiconductor manufacturers were the driving force behind these developments in the past. But no longer. Today, it’s customers who are forcing manufacturers to develop new processes seemingly more quickly than ever.
Responding to these demands, TSMC has unveiled a 28nm process. Included in the announcement is the first public acknowledgement that TSMC has high K metal gate (HKMG) technology. Until now, only Intel and the IBM Alliance have unveiled this technology.
The 28nm process will be available in two flavours; one (28LPT) aimed at low power applications; the other (28HP) at designs where high performance is the main requirement.
It’s the first time that TSMC has offered different gate materials at the same node. While the 28LPT process features silicon oxynitride (SiON), the 28HP process features HKMG.
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Author
Graham Pitcher
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