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TSMC Announces First Functional 16nm FinFET ARM-based Networking Processor

2014/10/07 | By Ken Liu

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) on Sept. 25 announced the silicon foundry industry's first fully functional ARM-based networking processor using its 16-nanometer FinFET process technology licensed by HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd., a designer of specialty application ICs.

Such announcement has motivated industry executives to predict TSMC to likely begin volume production using the advanced foundry process technology in Q2, 2015 or one quarter earlier than previously thought.

TSMC's 16nm FinFET process has double the gate density than its 28nm HPM process, achieving 40% faster processing at the same power consumption, and 60% more energy efficient at the same processing speed as the 28nm process technology. Also the newest technology reduces  amperage leakage. These advantages overcome critical barriers to further scaling of advanced SoC technology.

TSMC President and Co-Chief Executive Officer Mark Liu say the company has been working on FinFET R&D for over a decade and is pleased to see the fruitful outcome, that the company is confident in its ability to maximize the technology's capabilities and bring results in line with its established foundry leadership in advanced technology.

HiSilicon President Teresa He said TSMC's 16FinFET process enables the company's new processor to achieve significant leap in performance and power optimization supporting high-end networking applications. And by leveraging TSMC's production-proven heterogeneous CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) 3D IC packaging process, HiSilicon integrates its 16-nanometer logic chips with a 28-nanometer I/O chip for a cost-effective system solution.

TSMC's 16nm FinFET technology and CoWoS solution had successfully brought the company's innovative design on the industry's first 32-core ARM Cortex-A57 processor to working silicon. The processor is developed for next-generation wireless communications and routers with processing speed up to 2.6GHz. This networking processor's performance increases by three folds, said He.

TSMC executives said the company's 16nm FinFET process has entered trial production with excellent yields after completing all reliability verifications in November 2013, paving the way for the company and its customers to engage in more future product tape-outs, pilot activities and early sampling.

They felt although Intel had announced 14nm FinFET Core M processor and would begin to make the processors available on  market by the end of this year, the process and 16nm FinFET are two different markets. But Samsung's 14nm process, they said, will compete with TSMC's 16nm process for the same orders. (KL)