TSMC
TSMC is no stranger to building big chips. Besides the ~800mm2 reticle limit of their normal logic processes, the company already produces even larger chips by fitting multiple dies on to a single silicon interposer, using their chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) technology. But even with current-gen CoWoS allowing for interposers up to 3.3x TSMC's reticle limit, TSMC plans to build bigger still in response to projected demand from the HPC and AI industries. To that end, as part of the company's North American Technology Symposium last week, TSMC announced that they are developing the means of building super-sized interposers that can reach over 8x the reticle limit. TSMC's current-generation CoWoS technology allows for building interposers up to 2831 mm2 and the company is already seeing customers come...
ASML to Ship 30 EUV Scanners in 2019: Faster EUV Tools Coming
ASML said last week that it planned to ship 30 extreme ultraviolet scanners in 2019, up significantly from 2018. The plan is not surprising, as demand for EUV lithography...
17 by Anton Shilov on 1/28/2019TSMC: 7nm Now Biggest Share of Revenue
As process node technology gets ever more complex, it costs big dollars to develop and then building chips on the process is also a very costly process. The big...
44 by Ian Cutress on 1/17/2019TSMC: First 7nm EUV Chips Taped Out, 5nm Risk Production in Q2 2019
Last week, TSMC made two important announcements concerning its progress with extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). First up, the company has successfully taped out its first customer chip using its...
50 by Anton Shilov on 10/9/2018AMD's 7nm CPUs & GPUs To Be Fabbed by TSMC, on Track for 2018 - 2019
With the announcement that its long-time manufacturing partner (and outright former fab) GlobalFoundries is dropping out of the race for bleeding-edge manufacturing nodes, the second big question of the...
28 by Ryan Smith & Anton Shilov on 8/27/2018TSMC: Outbreak of Malware That Triggered Delays & Losses Caused by Software for New Tool
TSMC announced this week that it suffered a computer malware outbreak, resulting in a roughly 3 day outage for parts of the fab while systems were restored. As a...
42 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2018AMD “Rome” EPYC CPUs to Be Fabbed By TSMC
Along with AMD’s epic quarterly results that were announced yesterday afternoon, there was also an interesting nugget buried in the earnings call for the results. We’ve known for some...
32 by Ryan Smith on 7/26/2018TSMC Details 5 nm Process Tech: Aggressive Scaling, But Thin Power and Performance Gains
At a special event last week, TSMC announced the first details about its 5 nm manufacturing technology that it plans to use sometime in 2020. CLN5 will be the...
10 by Anton Shilov on 5/8/2018Cadence and Micron Demo DDR5-4400 IMC and Memory, Due in 2019
Cadence this week introduced the industry’s first IP interface in silicon for the current provisional DDR5 specification developed by JEDEC. Cadence’s IP and test chip us fabricated using TSMC’s...
31 by Anton Shilov on 5/3/2018TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
TSMC last week announced that it had started high volume production (HVM) of chips using their first-gen 7 nm (CLN7FF) process technology. The contract maker of semiconductors says it...
63 by Anton Shilov on 4/24/2018Xilinx Announces Project Everest: The 7nm FPGA SoC Hybrid
This week Xilinx is making public its latest internal project for the next era of specialized computing. The new product line, called Project Everest in the interim, is based...
16 by Ian Cutress on 3/19/2018TSMC Starts to Build Fab 18: 5 nm, Volume Production in Early 2020
TSMC last week held a groundbreaking ceremony for its Fab 18 phase 1 production facility. The fab will produce chips using TSMC’s 5 nm process starting from early 2020...
27 by Anton Shilov on 1/31/2018Getting Radeon Vega Everywhere: An Exclusive Media Interview at AMD Tech Day, with CEO Dr. Lisa Su
In what is becoming an annual tradition, during AMD’s Tech Day here at CES we were given the opportunity to spend some time with Dr. Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO...
65 by Ian Cutress on 1/24/2018TSMC Teams Up with ARM and Cadence to Build 7nm Data Center Test Chips in Q1 2018
TSMC has announced plans to build its first test chips for data center applications using its 7 nm fabrication technology. The chip will use compute cores from ARM, a...
12 by Anton Shilov on 9/14/2017Microsoft’s Project Scorpio: More Hardware Details Revealed
This news piece contains speculation, and suggests silicon implementation based on released products and roadmaps. The only elements confirmed for Project Scorpio are the eight x86 cores, 6 TFLOPs...
113 by Ian Cutress on 4/6/2017ARM Announces 10FF "Artemis" Test Chip
Today in collaboration with TSMC, ARM's physical IP division is announcing the tapeout of a 10nm test chip demonstrating the company's readiness for the new manufacturing process. The new...
24 by Andrei Frumusanu on 5/18/2016EUV Lithography Makes Good Progress, Still Not Ready for Prime Time
At the recent annual SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Intel, TSMC and other leading semiconductor companies said that significant strides have been made in extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) over the...
38 by Anton Shilov on 3/10/2016