IBM, Chartered Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies and Samsung Electronics have announced production of the first functional circuits based on their 45nm low power process technology collaboration.
The first working 45nm circuits, targeted at next generation communication systems, were proven in silicon using the process technology jointly developed by the partners and produced at IBM’s 300mm East Fishkill fab. Amongst the blocks verified successfully are standard library cells and I/O elements provided by Infineon, as well as embedded memory developed by the alliance. Infineon has included special circuitry on the first 300mm wafers to debug the complex process and to gain experience in product architecture interactions.
Hermann Eul, president of Infineon’s Communication Solutions business group, said: “The first structures in 45nm represent our most cutting edge technology, bringing together high performance capabilities and low power consumption. This solution is clearly well suited to address the needs of next generation mobile applications.”
“Our early hardware results indicate that the 45nm node device performance is at least 30% greater than that of the 65nm node,” said Lisa Su, vice president of semiconductor research and development at IBM.
The 45nm low power process is expected to be installed and fully qualified at Chartered, IBM and Samsung 300mm fabs by the end of 2007.
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