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Contracts Inundate TSMC's 28nm Capacity

2011/09/09 | By Ken Liu

Taipei, Sept. 9, 2011 (CENS)--S.Y. Chiang, R&D vice president of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), recently said that the company has sold out all of its 28-nanometer process capacity and that demand for the capacity will remain prosperous next year.

Chiang pointed out that the company has completed many 28nm tape-outs, the final IC design results before hitting production lines, and begun filling the contract orders.

According to chip-making equipment suppliers, chips that TSMC will begin to make in the fourth quarter using 28nm process include field programmable gate array (FPGA) ICs contracted by Altera Corp. and Xilinx Inc., base-band chips and Snapdragon-coded processor for 3G mobile phones contracted by Qualcomm Inc., and accelerated graphics chips contracted by AMD Inc. and Nvidia Corp.

They estimated Renesas Electronics Corp., Fujitsu, and Broadcom Corp. to begin placing 28nm contracts with TSMC in the first quarter next year.

Also, the top TSMC R&D executive noted that the company will begin general production in September 2012 based on 20nm process at its 300mm wafer fabs and to develop 14nm process technology. It will begin to construct its first 450-millimeter wafer fab for 20nm production in 2015 in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan.

Industry executives estimated 28nm process would help boost TSMC's revenue for next year by 7.2% from this year.