14 DAY TRIAL // TSMC seems to be making great progress with its 28nm manufacturing technology, as NetLogic Microsystems has just announced that it developed and taped out its next-generation silicon built using the new fabrication node, leading the way for the likes of AMD and Nvidia to start developing 28nm graphics cores.
NetLogic Microsystems specializes in manufacturing high-performance networking solutions that can be used for a wide range of applications.
The 28nm fabrication node has been used by the company for migrating their next-generation multi-core processing, knowledge-based processing, and 10/40/100 Gigabit PHY product lines to offer customers better performance as well as lower power consumption and prices.
The chips are targeted at next-generation LTE (Long Term Evolution), IPv6, data center and security markets, and are just the first of the company's products to be launched in 28nm.
“I congratulate our team on this major milestone and for continuing to outperform the industry on engineering execution excellence by having taped out a very complex silicon for next generation network infrastructure applications,” said Ron Jankov, president and CEO at NetLogic Microsystems.
“Our strategy to be on the forefront of manufacturing technologies and be one or two nodes ahead of our competition has helped us grow market share in knowledge based processors, 10/40/100GE PHY and now multi-core processors,” concluded the company's rep.
The 28nm process offers up to 50 percent higher speed, 40 percent lower power and 100 percent higher gate density compared to the 40nm node, and AMD as well as Nvidia plan to use it for their next generation graphics cards.
Next to TSMC, GlobalFoundries has also made great strides recently to increase their 28nm manufacturing capabilities, the company announcing just last week that it planned to invest a whopping $5.4 billion, in 2011, in order to expand its chip production capacity.