28nm roll out 'doing well' says TSMC

Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe, said: "28nm is doing well. We have 36 designs in production and another 132 tape outs. The defect density is on track and yields are better than those of our 40nm process at the same point." The TSMC view is confirmed by a source inside Altera, who says the fpga developer 'agrees with the TSMC position and doesn't not see any unusual issues'. The comparison to TSMC's 40nm roll out in 2009 has not been received favourably by some observers, who recall yield problems serious enough that Rick Tsai, TSMC's ceo at the time, was sacked by chairman Morris Chang. Nevertheless, Marced accepts that developing new process technologies and getting them ready for production is 'becoming challenging'. Partly, that challenge is being met by investment in R&D. "We invested $7.3billion in R&D in 2011 and will spend $6bn this year," she claimed. "Of this, 12% is in R&D for tools. We have created an R&D centre with dedicated lines for teams to develop leading edge technology." TSMC continues to invest in r&d engineers. The company now has close to 33,000 employees and R&D staff represent a significant part of this. "We are determined to deploy our advanced technology road map," she stated. "We continue to hire people to work at imec in Belgium and we have teams working at Lund University in Sweden on new materials for a couple of process generations in the future." In terms of revenue, leading edge processes are beginning to make a contribution to TSMC's bottom line. According to Marced, 2% of the foundry's revenues in the last quarter of 2011 derived from 28nm products. "This will increase to 5% in the first quarter of 2012," she continued, "and is likely to be more than 10% of company revenues by the end of 2012." Alongside this, TSMC is pushing ahead with deployment of 20nm technology. "Production will start at the end of 2012," she asserted, "and 3d finfets will be available in 2014." But with the move to 20nm devices and beyond, TSMC is having to face the question of lithography techniques, including the thorny issue of extreme ultraviolet (euv) – a technology which has yet to emerge much beyond the lab. TSMC has taken delivery of its first euv machine and is working to get the approach production ready. "We will continue to use immersion lithography for 20nm," Marced noted, "but after that it will have to be euv and we expect to have fixed the problems within two years." Equally important, as TSMC follows Moore's Law, is the move to manufacturing on 450mm products. TSMC has joined the Global 450 Consortium, a multibillion dollar US based project aiming to speed the development of production on 450mm wafers. "We're working with Intel, Samsung and IBM to build a pilot line," Marced explained. The company's plans call for pilot production on 450mm wafers in 2013/14, with production planned for 2015/16 in Fab 15. TSMC believes 450mm is the only way forward. "If you look at our installed capacity," Marced explained, "most is at 90nm and larger. But most revenue comes from 65nm and smaller. The market is also moving to the leading edge, with mobile applications needing chips with more performance and lower power consumption. We believe 20nm production will need to be on 450mm wafers, certainly for 14nm. Otherwise, chips will be too expensive. We're looking for ways to improve prices for customers and the only way we can see is 450mm wafers."