TSMC 28nm Technology Enters Mass Production

TSMC announced just earlier today that the company has started volume production of chips based on its advanced 28nm fabrication technology with the first production wafers already being shipped to its customers.

TSMC's 28nm node includes four manufacturing technologies: 28nm High Performance (28HP), 28nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL), 28nm Low Power (28LP), and 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM).

Among these 28HP, 28HPL and 28LP are all in volume production while 28HPM will be ready for production by the end of this year.

According to TSMC, the foundry has more than 80 customer product tape-outs based on the 28nm technology, which is more than double the number of tape-outs based on the 40nm node.

"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,” concluded AMD's rep.

TSMC's 28nm fabrication process is extremely important not just for AMD but also Nvidia, as both companies rely on this technology for building their next-generation graphics processors.

Other companies, such as Altera, Qualcomm or Xilinx are also interested in TSMC's 28nm fabrication technology.

Until now, many voices in the industry have stated that TSMC is facing yield issues with its 28nm process node, but the foundry is now saying that its new node has “surpassed the previous generation’s production ramps and product yield at the same point in time.”

However, when taking in consideration the problems faced by TSMC with 40nm chip production, this isn't so assuring as the Taiwanese foundry would like it to be.