14 DAY TRIAL // TSMC’s main competitor, the Taiwanese compatriot company United Microelectronics Corporation, is progressing smoothly with the roll-out of the 28 nm technology.
This may not be such good news for TSMC, as they’ve already lost consistent orders due to capacity constraints we've already reported about here.
While TSMC is handicapped by the lack of sufficient manufacturing capacity, the fact that GlobalFoundries has a very good 28 nm fabrication process and capacity to spare, along with the fact that UMC will start producing 28 nm devices, will only lead to a drop in costs of the chips made.
UMC is taking its time. They’ve already shipped thousands of functional engineering samples of chips made using the 28LPT and 28HLP versions of the 28nm fabrication process that use conventional Poly/SiON (silicon oxynitride) gates, but at the end of 2012, only 5% of their wafers will be made in 28 nm.