14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is planning to offer to its customers the 22nm technology by 2011, while the 15nm fabrication process is said to go online sometime in 2013. The company also plans to ramp up 32nm production in 2009, according to its latest roadmap. However, these new technologies are expected to be expensive to develop, which is why the company is considering adopting larger wafers, a strategy that is believed to bring manufacturing costs to a more acceptable level.
"While Moore's Law still applies, the shrinking of technology nodes will have to overcome the barriers of power consumption and costs," commented TSMC Vice President for Research and Development Jack Sun, according to Digitimes.
The company's VP also noted that the pace for cost reduction had been, unfortunately, slowing down. According to him, the costs declined by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% in a 10-year period, between 1993 and 2003. The CACR decline between 2003 and 2018 is expected to be around 26%, according to Mr. Sun, who also noted that, once the industry started adopting the 32nm process technology, the manufacturing costs per transistor would be bound to get higher.
According to Mr. Sun, one way of reducing the production costs is to migrate to 18-inch wafer production, but that isn't expected to happen until sometime after 2014. On that note, Mr. Sun said that, looking at the development of the semiconductor industry, the peak of 8-inch production was between 1994 to 2004, while the peak of 12-inch production is between 2004 to 2014.
The lower the manufacturing process becomes, the higher the performance chips are expected to deliver. Also, a smaller production technology is said to provide chip makers with better ways of improving the power consumption for their high-speed, high-end chips.
Earlier this year, there were some concerns regarding lower manufacturing capacities at TSMC, to enable more advanced process technologies.