Mar

13

TSMC $5B R&D Center

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The world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will spend a eye-popping $5 billion to convert its 300mm Fab 12 in the Hsinchu Science Park into a research and development center. The mega R&D center will provide a central place to develop 32nm, 22nm and 15nm process technologies for the next 6 years (Ref). Given the general 2 year timeline for a technology node development, one would expect 32nm process will be ready by 2009, 22nm and 15nm will be in place by 2011 and 2013 respectively . In face of stiff competition from the IBM-led Common Platform alliance, this mega R&D investment will ensure TSMC continue to be the industry leader in CMOS process technology.

In the last one year, TSMC is expanding aggressively into microprocessor and memory segments. Earlier, TSMC had announced the deal with Sun Microsystems that it would manufacture UltraSPARC processors for Sun (Ref). Few days ago, it also striked another deal with SanDisk. Both companies will co-develop 45nm NAND chips. Besides Sandisk, Spansion is also one of the top memory clients for TSMC (Ref). Why would TSMC keep chasing after microprocessor and memory customers? Given the increasing complexity and cost of chip designs in using the advanced technology nodes, such as 45nm to 22nm, one would expect it would take a long long time for most chip design companies to come up to speed and embrace the advanced technology nodes. The exceptions would be microprocessor, memory and FPGA chip makers which always hungry for speed and performance.

 

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Mar

11

Is Hitachi Going to Join IBM Common Platform?

Filed Under Semiconductor Industry, Video Gallery | Leave a Comment

Hitachi and IBM announced on Monday that they would begin a two-year semiconductor metrology research program for next-generation 32- and 22-nanometer CMOS devices. Engineers from both Hitachi and IBM will conduct the joint research at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. and at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, N.Y. It’s the first time the two companies have agreed to work together on semiconductor technology. Although the current joint research program only focus on metrology, it would well be the harbinger for Hitachi to join the IBM-led Common Platform alliance (Ref).

The IBM-led Common Platform alliance is the largest bulk CMOS technology alliance in the world. Its members consist of Chartered, Freescale, Infineon, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and STMicroelectronics. Toshiba is the most recent member, joining the group in December last year. The R&D cost of developing next-generation CMOS technology has soared significantly. It costed about $1.5 billion to develop a 65-nm node, but it would need nearly twice or more to develop 32nm CMOS process technology. As a consequence, many chip makers do not have the financial prowess for such development, alliance seems to be the only way to stay in the 32nm rat race for most companies, except Intel and TSMC. Byran Lewis, VP of Garnter, painted a similar picture in the DesignCon conference last week (see video below).

 

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