TSMC is taking a big jump ahead of the rest of the foundry industry in offering prototype 28nm chips by the end of the year. The company's multi-user wafer service, called CyberShuttle, will be available for 28nm process runs before the end of this year.
TSMC says that 28nm will not be a half node process. The company is in the habit of bringing out half node processes between the full node steps, so one would have expected 28nm to be the half node between 32nm and 22nm.
But TSMC says 28nm will be a full node process which means, according to TSMC's K.T.Sung, that it will be fully supported by IP.
"We will field a full IP portfolio", Sung told Electronics Weekly, "and the process includes an RF option."
Sung said that TSMC had customers for its 28nm CyberShuttle, but wouldn't say which process flavour they wanted.
However TSMC's European president Maria Marced told Electronics Weekly that the 28nm process had been developed in response to demand from the cellular market. "There's a clear market need in the cellular market which is evolving very rapidly", said Marced.
When it was suggested that sounded as though Qualcomm would be the first customer for the 28nm process, Marced said 'No comment'.
However Marced did say that the 28nm process would be 'less than 2X' more expensive to customers than TSMC's 45nm process.
The process comes in a low power flavour and a high performance flavour. The low power process, which is the one the cellular industry will be interested in, uses silicon oxynitride, and the high performance 28nm process uses high-k metal gate. The low-power process will be the first to kick off with initial production in Q1 2010.
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