TSMC Plans Processes Below 14nm

Consumers that are moderately interested in the underlying conditions behind IT companies' performance and R&D development efforts may be aware of a certain factor known as Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors placeable on an integrated circuit (without cost impact) doubles every two years. For makers of semiconductors, this means that they must reduce the size of their manufacturing processes about just as often. With manufacturing processes nearing 20nm and lower dimensions, however, foundries may not be able to follow this pace.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is one of the best known semiconductor manufacturers in the world, mainly because it provides chips for top-tier players like NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices. As such, it always has to cope with the pressure of its clients’ plans to move to more advanced technologies as quickly as possible. Over the past few months, the foundry has scrapped plans for some of its processes, including the 22nm, deciding to go straight to 20 nm chips by 2012. Now, it is revealed that, to cope with Moore's Law, it will start researching manufacturing processes of under 14nm.

According to TSMC Chairman and CEO, Morris Chang, the 20nm node will come, more or less, on time (according to Moore's law) but, except for the node following it, the same rate of technological advancement may not endure. As such, process-technology evolution between 2011 and 2014 is expected to slow down, which will, consequently, lead to a slowdown in semiconductor-market growth. This means that the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing plant will have to spend more on R&D and also cope with rising manufacturing tool costs.

The first big step towards rising to the challenge of impending progress slowdown will be increasing workforce to 29,000 (compared to the 20,000 in 2009). TSMC has also set an ambitious capex of US$4.8 billion for the ongoing year.