Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe, talks to Electronics Weekly about roadmaps, best practices, the semiconductor upturn, and the challenges that face foundries...
1. What is the TSMC roadmap for advanced, derivatives and mainstream technologies?
TSMC is focused on developing its processes to match the specific needs of a wide variety of market segments and customer requirements. For those requiring high performance, we are developing the 28HP process, for Low Power or RF we are developing the 28HPL process. In the mainstream we have focused on the high voltage processes both for power management and for display driver markets. In other fields, we have expanded our MEMS service, and developed 3D packaging to enhance our total offerings.
2. There are now many design considerations that are part of the time-to-market challenge. What are some of the best practices that TSMC is implementing to meet those considerations?
TSMC is addressing the time-to-market challenge in a number of ways which include developing a silicon proven design ecosystem for every new node such that a designer has full access to proven IP on fully characterised design tools. We add to this the large database of silicon process experience we derive from volume manufacture, and provide the latest recommendations for effective design to ensure the best chance of right first time silicon. We have also seen a trend to much wider adoption of Multi Product Wafers and Multi Layer Mask runs to keep the cost of prototyping down. This still allows early samples to be produced on the same manufacturing line to seed the market.
3. What will be the main features of the semiconductor upturn?
TSMC is seeing an acceleration in the number of companies moving to a fablite or fabless business model, as more management teams recognise the benefit of spending R+D budgets on product development rather than manufacturing. Collaboration will be the driving factor in the semiconductor industry. Combining the expertise of multiple players who are focused on delivering products to market on time will be the strongest indicator of success during the upturn. A great example is our recent announcements with Fujitsu on our collaboration to develop 40nm and 28nm processes.
4. Define some of the challenges that foundries and their customers face going forward.
The biggest challenge for our customers and foundries is to raise the overall margins that each party makes. We have seen throughout the industry that volumes are increasing but Average Selling Prices are declining which is putting pressure throughout the supply chain. The only way to break this downward spiral is to collaborate more, sharing the cost of development, and cutting down the time-to-market for new products.
5. Is Europe playing its part in developing new process and design advances?
Europe is leading the world in a number of areas including IP development, optical equipment development and collaborative process development with such strong partners as IMEC, ASML, Mapper and ARM. On the design side, Europe has the leading Mixed Signal and Analogue design community, which is helping to define new levels of integration and pushing new boundaries on Automotive, RF design and smartcard design, where Europe leads the world.
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