TSMC set to take 16nm into volume production in 2014
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TSMC's revenue from devices targeted at communications applications grew by 29% in 2013 to represent 54% of its annual revenue. This reflected strong demand for application processors, baseband, display drivers and other peripheral ICs. However, sales into the computer segment decreased 10%. For the full year, TSMC revenues were reported as $20.1billion.
In terms of technology, production of 28nm devices tripled over 2012 and the node now represents around 30% of TSMC's wafer revenue.
Chairman Morris Chang said TSMC's 2014 capital budget is estimated to be between $9.5bn and $10bn, similar to that of 2013. "About 95% of the capital expenditure is for advanced technologies and we mean 20nm, 16nm, more 28nm, R&D and our mask operation."
Talking at the company's latest financial meeting, Mark Liu, pictured, co CEO, claimed its 16nm FinFET process is now ready for tape out and could be in volume production this year. "Our 16FinFET yield improvement has been ahead of our plan. This is because we have been leveraging the yield, learning from 20SoC. Currently, the 16FinFET SRAM yield is already close to that of the 20SoC process."
Liu said that more than 20 tape outs for products based on the 16FinFET process are scheduled for 2014. "These include baseband, application processors, application processor SoCs, graphics, networking, hard disk drive, a few programmable arrays, CPUs and servers," he noted. Liu also pointed to the development of an enhanced transistor version of 16FinFET plus, which he said will bring a further 15% performance improvement. "It will be the highest performance technology amongst all available 16 and 14nm technologies in 2014. This progress is well ahead of Samsung."
Although not announced officially, TSMC's 10FinFET technology is likely to be qualified by the end of 2015.
