TSMC announces 28nm in full production
With many fabless companies choosing to jump a process and move directly to 28nm, TSMC says the number of customer 28nm production tape outs has more than doubled as compared with that of 40nm.
At 28nm, there are currently more than 80 customer product tape-outs. The TSMC 28nm process has surpassed the previous generation’s production ramps and product yield at the same point in time due to closer and earlier collaboration with customers.
Both Xilinx and Altera are using the 28nm node, albeit on different technologies, for their latest FPGA families. “Building on TSMC and Altera’s 18 years of established technology partnership, TSMC’s comprehensive 28nm process offerings and Altera’s leading-edge FPGA technology complement each other perfectly, enabling us to uniquely tailor our 28nm product portfolio to best meet our customers’ diverse design requirements,” said Vince Hu, Vice President of Product and Corporate Marketing at Altera Corporation. “In our 28nm generation, TSMC’s 28LP process fits the requirement of Cyclone V and Arria V families with the lowest power and costs, and we have utilised the 28HP process for the industry’s first delivered high-end 28nm FPGA, Stratix V with the highest performance and the lowest power in high-performance systems.”
“Building our 7 Series FPGA and processing families on the 28nm HPL process in collaboration with TSMC is enabling Xilinx to lower static power by 50% while also increasing both raw performance and usable performance ,” said Vincent Tong, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Quality and New Product Introductions at Xilinx. “Xilinx has delivered several industry-firsts to our customers, including the first 28nm FPGA to begin shipments and the industry’s highest capacity FPGAs with the lowest power. To date, we’ve passed preliminary product qualification, our yields are on track and we’ve shipped 7 Series FPGAs to customers months ahead of our competition thanks to TSMC’s 28nm HPL process.”
Other companies launching products based on TSMC’s 28nm technology include AMD, NVidia and Qualcomm. TSMC’s 28nm design ecosystem is available through its Open Innovation Platform, with qualified EDA design tools and third-party IP ready for customer designs.
