14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that The Foundry Company (the manufacturing firm AMD has recently announced to spin off its fabs into) will be able to move towards the 32-nanometer fabrication process while still using Silicon on insulator. Previous news on the Web stated that the company would drop SOI when moving to a smaller die, but it seems that the 32nm CPUs will still have it.
Advanced Micro Devices is known to be using SOI for its processors, although the process brings a lot of burden. For this reason, the giant chip maker Intel has avoided SOI and will probably keep doing so. But AMD has to get maximum productivity out of the process, since it has only one or two fabs operational. At the same time, AMD is known to have better yields than Intel. And it seems that some voices from the Sunnyvale company said that the 32nm manufacturing process would still be using SOI.
AMD was expected to talk about the 32nm process at a certain point, especially given the fact that its 45nm Deneb and Shanghai processors, as well as their variations, are not too far in the future. Most probably, the 32nm CPUs will be based on the brand new redesigned core code-named Bulldozer. The competitor Intel will have the code-named Sandy Bridge as its first 32-nm chip, which is said to be a shrunk and tuned up version of its Nehalem core. On the other hand, Intel is reported to plan the release of a brand new core in 2011.
The Foundry Company is said to be able to manufacture both bulk and SOI microprocessors by 2010. AMD is also expected to make its chipsets and other chips on bulk. At least in theory. If this turns to be true, then TSMC will face some competition in 2010, while it business will also drop a little, and the manufacturer will certainly not like it.