TSMC to tape out 40 more products at 90nm by year-end
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has already produced over 80 products using 90nm processes, and the company expects to tape out 40 more products at this technology node by the end of this year, according to Genda Hu, vice president of
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c58099)  has announced the addition of "Future Trends  in Microelectronics: Up the Nano Creek" to  their offering.
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Implemented using Texas Instruments&#39; 90 nanometer process technology, UltraSPARC IV+ will double the application throughput of the existing UltraSPARC IV through expanded caches and buffers, a better branch prediction mechanism, augmented prefetching
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), of Hsinchu, Taiwan, has expanded its patent-infringement fight against rival contract chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) by filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
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Intel Corp.'s 65-nanometer process technology will not be very different from its 90-nanometer process technology, which should help make for a smoother transition between the two manufacturing techniques in 2005, according to a briefing from an Intel manufacturing executive last week.
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Chipmaker becomes the last of several well-known chip companies to begin making 90-nanometer processors.
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Sun Microsystems has tapped Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to manufacture its latest UltraSparc processors, Sun said Tuesday.The Taiwanese company will also collaborate with Sun in the OpenSparc program to expand research on the processors in Taiwan. The two companies plan to expand the university outreach program in Taiwan, as well as offer OpenSparc technology to other TSMC customers.TSMC will manufacture UltraSparc processors using its 45-nanometer production technology, as well as future generations of the UltraSparc, Sun said to a statement. Texas Instruments, Sun&#39;s current UltraSparc partner, will continue to test and package the processors.Sun tapped TSMC for production because of its lower costs, in addition to its advanced technology, Sun said. The companies are already working to make the transition to TSMC from TI as fast as possible, Sun added.TSMC is the world&#39;s largest contract chip maker.The term 45-nanometer refers to making chips with transistors and other components as tiny as 45nm, enabling them to be smaller, more powerful and energy-efficient. The nanometer term describes the size of the smallest feature that can be manufactured on a single chip. There are about three to six atoms in a nanometer and there are a billion nanometers in a meter.TSMC has said that some types of chips made using 45nm technology are generally 40 percent smaller than the slightly older 65nm size, use less power, and have 40 percent greater functionality.Currently, most chips are still made using technology 90nm and larger, but the move to smaller sizes is increasing, led by high end chips such as DRAM (dynamic RAM), microprocessors, core logic chip sets, and graphics processors. Intel, the world&#39;s largest chip maker, was first to mass produce chips using 45nm technology.The move to developing smaller chip manufacturing technology is crucial to meet user demand for ever smaller devices that can do more, such as mobile phones with built-in PDA (personal digital assistant) and camera functions, and digital music players. Chip makers can also increase output using the smaller technology.Sun has established six major universities as OpenSparc Technology Centers of Excellence so far, all of them in the U.S. The schools include the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Texas, Austin; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Stanford University; and Carnegie Mellon University. The universities must sign a two-year commitment to execute chip design research and course work based on Sun&#39;s chip multi-threading (CMT) design.If a Taiwanese university is chosen to participate as an OpenSparc Technology Center of Excellence, it will be the first outside the U.S.
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Intel is drawing the curtain on some of its future research projects to continue making transistors smaller, faster, and less power-hungry out as far as 2020.
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Chip giant says it will move to new design by next year, but leaves many questions unanswered.
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AMD will implement the strained silicon manufacturing technique on its upcoming 90-nanometer processors as well as 130-nanometer processors.
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Can you top 80? Intel, lBM, AMD and Sun Microsystems will go coring mad next week as the vendors reveal some of their most impressive future chip designs at the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits) Conference in San Francisco.â¦
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At this morning's analyst conference, AMD executives said they may scale back some on R&D. But earlier in the week, partner IBM unveiled a plan that could help fill the gap: a way to rework existing 45 nm parts designs for 32 nm.
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Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., a leading Chinese computer chip maker, plans to begin supplying chips using more advanced technology to major clients such as Texas Instruments Inc. beginning next year, the companies said Friday.
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The world's largest chipmaker plans to present technical papers on two of its more interesting designs, the low-power Silverthorne chip and a quad-core Itanium processor, during the ISSCC conference this week.
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First 45nm CPU designs to tape out next quarter IDF Intel will tape out its first 45nm microprocessor designs during Q4, company CEO Paul Otellini revealed today. That's the first step on the road to delivering a CPU that consumes a tenth of the power today's chips do. Otellini promised such a part a year ago. Today, he said it will arrive in 2008, two years earlier than forecast.â¦
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) posted record sales and net profit in the fourth quarter as demand for chips in communications, computers, and consumer electronics products soared, the company said Thursday.The world&#39;s largest contract chip maker said sales grew more than 25 percent year-on-year to NT$93.9 billion (US$2.9 billion) in the three months ended Dec. 31. Net profit increased nearly 24 percent to NT$34.5 billion. TSMC&#39;s previous sales record was NT$88.96 billion in the third quarter of 2007, while its prior record net profit came in the second quarter of 2006, NT$34.0 billion.TSMC&#39;s fourth quarter sales beat its own guidance in part due to increased demand for more advanced chips made using 90-nanometer, 65-nanometer and even finer manufacturing technologies. A total of 10 percent of TSMC&#39;s sales were for 65-nanometer and below technologies in the fourth quarter, up from 7 percent in the third quarter. The nanometer term describes the size of the smallest feature manufactured on a single chip. There are about three to six atoms in a nanometer, and a billion nanometers in a meter. Reducing the size of the features on a chip enables companies to create smaller, more energy efficient, and more powerful chips.&quot;Demand for advanced technology capacity remained very strong throughout the year,&quot; said Rick Tsai, president and CEO of TSMC, during the company&#39;s investors&#39; conference. &quot;This will continue to grow,&quot; he said.The company forecast strong guidance for the first quarter of this year, saying mobile phone and PC shipment growth should help bolster the chip industry. TSMC is a bellwether for the global IT industry due to the number and variety of chips it produces for a range of electronic gadgets.TSMC predicts its revenue will drop to between NT$87 billion and NT$89 billion in the first quarter, a slimmer decline than analysts had expected.TSMC&#39;s biggest rival, Taiwan&#39;s United Microelectronics predicted a far worse first quarter, with revenue forecast to decline by as much as 15 percent and it may post a loss for the quarter. UMC posted sales of NT$27.6 billion in the fourth quarter, up nearly 6 percent year-over-year, but its net profit fell 76.1 percent to NT$1.36 billion.TSMC joined a number of other chip makers in slashing its capital spending&#160;for this year. The company predicted its 2008 spending on new factories and production line equipment will reach only US$1.8 billion, down from US$2.6 billion last year. UMC forecast its 2008 capital spending at US$500 million to US$700 million, down from US$900 million last year.&quot;In the coming five years, we believe the capital intensity will be lower than the last five years.,&quot; said Lora Ho, TSMC&#39;s chief financial officer, indicating the company expects to spend less in coming years than it has in the past few years.Several&#160;Taiwanese chip makers have already announced significantly lower capital spending&#160;forecasts for this year, due in part to concerns about global economic growth and partly to a glut of DRAM (dynamic RAM) memory chips.&#160;
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Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), China&#39;s largest chip maker, fell short of its bid to turn a profit in 2007, ending the year with a $40 million loss. But that&#160;won&#39;t stop the company from expanding in 2008.SMIC saw revenue of $1.5 billion during 2007, an increase of 5.8 percent over the previous year. But higher sales weren&#39;t enough to offset a slide in DRAM prices and the company ended the year with a loss, albeit one that was slightly narrower than the $44.1 million loss recorded by the company in 2006.SMIC turned in a fourth-quarter loss of $22.2 million on revenue of $395.3 million. By comparison, the company reported a profit of $143,000 for the fourth quarter of 2006, thanks to an exceptional one-time gain from the sale of used equipment.Once seen as a potential rival to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world&#39;s largest contract chip maker,&#160;SMIC has struggled to turn a profit. Part of the problem is that, as the company built a series of new chip plants in China, it turned to DRAM companies for orders in a bid to fill these production lines. But DRAM is a brutal business with razor-thin margins and&#160;recent declines in memory prices&#160;have hurt SMIC&#39;s bottom line.SMIC is trying to wean itself off DRAM as a source of revenue, but the switch to production of more logic chips, which generally command higher prices and have better margins, hasn&#39;t happened fast enough to pull the chip maker out of the red.DRAM represented 23.6 percent of SMIC&#39;s revenue during the fourth quarter, compared to 38.6 percent during the same period last year. By comparison, logic chips represented a greater percentage of SMIC&#39;s fourth-quarter revenue, rising from 57.4 percent in 2006 to 67.4 percent last year.Despite reporting another annual loss, SMIC continues to expand. The company announced plans to build a 200-millimeter production line and a 300-millimeter fabrication plant in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city that lies next to Hong Kong. Construction will begin during the first half of 2008, the company said.