TSMC's 28nm Technology Now in Volume Production

Monday Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, said that its 28-nm process is now in volume production, and that production wafers have already been shipped to customers.

According to the company, the new process includes 28-nm High Performance (28HP), 28-nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL) and 28-nm Low Power (28LP) which are in volume production now. It also includes 28-nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM) which will be ready for production by the end of this year.

Monday TSMC said that the number of customer 28-nm production tape outs has more than doubled as compared with that of 40-nm, residing at more than 80 tape-outs so far. "The TSMC 28-nm 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," the company stated in a press release.

"We applaud TSMC’s success bringing a robust 28nm process to market, and we look forward to leveraging the benefits of this new process when we ship our next-generation discrete graphics products," said Matt Skynner, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, GPU Division, AMD. "The combination of AMD’s industry-leading graphics IP and TSMC’s manufacturing prowess will enable the next big leap in graphics performance with the parallel compute horsepower and power efficiency designed to meet the needs of even the most demanding gamer."

TSMC's 28-nm design ecosystem is now available through its Open Innovation Platform, with qualified EDA design tools and third-party IP ready for customer designs, the company said.