Globalfoundries Accelerates Roadmap: 14nm Chips in 2014

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Semiconductor contract manufacturer Globalfoundries announced its vision of future mobile chips and confirmed that it will be offering a 20 nm process in 2013 and 14 nm in 2014.

The company is planning to catch up with Intel's manufacturing process, which is scheduled to shrink to 14 nm in late 2013.

Globalfoudnries said that its 14 nm process, called 14XM (XM stands for "extreme mobility"), will deliver 3D FinFET transistor production capability with planar technology pulled from the 20 nm process to enable a fast transition to 14 nm. For the 2014 transistor generation, Globalfoundries promises a 20 to 55 percent performance advantage over 20 nm devices, while mobile devices using these chips will be able to achieve 40 to 60 percent better battery life.

The production roadmap ties in nicely with previous announcements of an expanded collaboration with ARM that should allow Globalfoundries to attract more ARM manufacturing business. Given the fact that Intel is aggressively moving its manufacturing roadmap as well, and using its manufacturing prowess to make its SoC more competitive, the announcement from Globalfoundries indicates that we will be seeing a very competitive mobile chip market over the next few years.

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Wolfgang Gruener
34 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blazorthon
    Global Foundries seems to have been improving lately. Perhaps their deals with Samsung have been more beneficial than I first thought that they'd be.
    Reply
  • jdwii
    I don't think they can do this, Look at their 32nm die at release and the issues it was having.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    jdwiiI don't think they can do this, Look at their 32nm die at release and the issues it was having.
    Their 32nm node wasn't great, but they've had a few deals and such with Samsung, so they might pull this off. Samsung is most definitely not a slouch in manufacturing as far as I'm aware.
    Reply
  • Amazing that we were at 65nm 4 years ago and now we are going into the 14nm territory in two years. So how close to quantum computing are we now?
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    If GF can pull this off, it would allow them to catch up to Intel in terms of process size. I have some serious doubts though, as would anyone who's been following the recent manufacturing trends at GF. I mean realistically, two major process shrinks in a row, year after year? It seems above and beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced manufacturing companies, much less GF.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    jupiter optimus maximusAmazing that we were at 65nm 4 years ago and now we are going into the 14nm territory in two years. So how close to quantum computing are we now?
    We're probably at least a few decades off of quantum computing getting much relevance in consumer computing.
    Reply
  • commandersozo
    jupiter optimus maximusAmazing that we were at 65nm 4 years ago and now we are going into the 14nm territory in two years. So how close to quantum computing are we now?The jump to quantum computing isn't a matter of getting current design standards miniaturized, it's a whole new paradigm.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    dragonsqrrlIf GF can pull this off, it would allow them to catch up to Intel in terms of process size. I have some serious doubts though, as would anyone who's been following the recent manufacturing trends at GF. I mean realistically, two major process shrinks in a row, year after year? It seems above and beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced manufacturing companies, much less GF.
    I'm sure that Intel and Samsung could do it. So long as GF doesn't wait until after their 28nm and 20nm processes are finished to work on the 14nm process, it could be done on time. All that it would take is using an different tech team to work it out than the one that works on 20nm and have them working at about the same time. I don't claim to knwo if they'll succeed or not, but it is possible and it's also even practical.
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    jupiter optimus maximusAmazing that we were at 65nm 4 years ago and now we are going into the 14nm territory in two years. So how close to quantum computing are we now?Intel/AMD has been knowned to make large die size CPU as large as 300-400mm2 for quite some time already. Fabs are moving to 450mm wafer too, this lower the cost further and allow more chips to fit per wafer or bigger die size.

    if we actually hit the limit of silicon, you u likely to see Intel/AMD start making larger die CPU until it become too big to be profitable b4 they switch to something else other than silicon. Intel Ivy is @ 160mm2 @ 22nm, Haswell retain the 4 core, so we still got some room to grow die size to 300-400mm2. *Nehelem 1156 is 296mm2 tho.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    TomfreakIntel/AMD has been knowned to make large die size CPU as large as 300-400mm2 for quite some time already. Fabs are moving to 450mm wafer too, this lower the cost further and allow more chips to fit per wafer or bigger die size.if we actually hit the limit of silicon, you u likely to see Intel/AMD start making larger die CPU until it become too big to be profitable b4 they switch to something else other than silicon. Intel Ivy is @ 160mm2 @ 22nm, Haswell retain the 4 core, so we still got some room to grow die size to 300-400mm2. *Nehelem 1156 is 296mm2 tho.
    It gets more difficult and more difficult to make such large CPU dies with smaller and smaller processes, especially without dropping frequencies at least a little. Die shrinks seem to shrink the size by much more than they shrink the power consumption at a given frequency, so it'd take serious CPU design improvements to counteract this.
    Reply