TSMC Likely to Advance 28nm Production Schedule

Taipei, Oct. 14, 2010 (CENS)--Some institutional investors estimated Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will put its 28nm process into production sometime this quarter, around one quarter ahead of its original schedule, in light of contracts from fabless house Altera Corp. for programmable logic chips designed on 28nm rule.

Once TSMC begins to offer foundry production using this process, it will become the world's first silicon-foundry provider to do so.

Industry watchers estimated TSMC will launch the production in small volume initially at its Fab 12 factory.

Altera is one of TSMC's major contract buyers of 40nm foundry service, and once said that it had not considered turning to other suppliers for foundry services despite tight capacity at TSMC.

At the IBC 2010 recently held in Amsterdam, Altera debuted its first integrated serial digital interface that comes with Stratix V FPGA developed on TSMC's 28nm process.