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Thursday, September 2, 2010
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GLOBALFOUNDRIES Lays Out Path for Sustained Technology
Leadership at 28nm and Beyond
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At today's inaugural Global Technology Conference,
GLOBALFOUNDRIES revealed the latest details of its progress in
technology development for the 28nm technology generation and
beyond.
The company announced the addition of a new technology offering
based on its 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology and
revealed for the first time its manufacturing timeline for the
22/20nm node.
In addition,the company announced it has taped-out a
qualification vehicle based on the ARM Cortex-A9 dual
processor, an industry first on 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG)
technology.
GLOGALFOUNDRIES also announced plans to bring a new class of
thin film storage (TFS) flash memory products to market on 90nm
technology. The advanced technology is expected to be deployed
in Freescale microcontrollers (MCUs) targeted for applications
ranging from consumer electronics and household appliances to
medical devices and smart metering systems.
28nm High Performance "Plus"
"From the very beginning our vision has been to be the
technology leader in the foundry industry," said Gregg
Bartlett, senior vice president of technology and research and
development at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "We ramped to volume production
at the 45/40nm generation well ahead of all foundries and we
are poised to maintain this leadership at 32/28nm, with plans
to extend this to the 22/20nm node. By leveraging our unique
heritage of leading-edge manufacturing and foundry best
practices, we will enable our customers to achieve the fastest
time-to-market for their next-generation designs."
GLOBALFOUNDRIES introduced a new technology to address the
growing market for smart mobile devices and high-performance
processors requiring more than 2GHz of processing power.
Scheduled to begin risk production in Q4 2011, the 28nm High
Performance Plus (HPP) technology provides a performance boost
of as much as 10% over the company's current 28nm High
Performance (HP) offering, as well as offering optional
ultra-low leakage transistors and SRAMs that extend the
application range from high performance into the low power
range. Furthermore, a rich RF CMOS offering also is available,
making this technology an ideal platform for the next
generation of high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) designs
with a broad addressable market ranging from low-power to
high-performance devices.
The new 28nm-HPP technology rounds out GLOBALFOUNDRIES? 28nm
offerings, which include the 28nm High Performance (HP)
technology targeted at high-performance wired applications and
the Super Low Power (SLP) technology for power-sensitive mobile
and consumer applications. All 28nm technologies feature
GLOBALFOUNDRIES' Gate First approach to HKMG. The company
claims that the approach is superior to other 28nm HKMG
solutions in both scalability and manufacturability, offering a
substantially smaller die size and cost, as well as
compatibility with proven design elements and process flows
from previous technology nodes.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is currently accepting designs for its 28nm
technologies. Many more product and IP test chips are being
validated at GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.
The Path to 22/20nm
With risk production set to begin in 2H 2012, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
is on its way to delivering 22/20nm technology to its customers
for product introduction in 2013. The 20nm technology offerings
will come in two varieties: a High Performance (HP) technology
designed for wired applications such as servers and media
processors, and a 20nm Super Low Power (SLP) technology
designed for power-sensitive mobile applications.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES also will have access to a 22nm Super High
Performance (SHP) technology designed for devices requiring the
utmost in performance. The 22/20nm technologies are planned to
be a full node shrink from 32/28nm, and will utilize
next-generation HKMG technology and strain engineering to
enable the area and die cost scaling the industry has come to
expect with each technology generation. Test chip shuttles for
the company's customers will begin running in Fab 1 in 2H2011.
First 28nm ARM Cortex-A9 Processor Platform with Gate First
High-K Metal Gate
GLOBALFOUNDRIES also announced it has taped-out a qualification
vehicle based on the ARM Cortex A9 dual processor, an industry
first on 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology. This
Technology Qualification Vehicle (TQV) will allow
GLOBALFOUNDRIES to optimize its 28nm HKMG process designs based
on the next-generation dual-core ARM processor.
The jointly developed TQV reached the tapeout stage in August
at GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany and was a part of
the strategic collaboration with ARM announced last year.
Silicon results are expected back from the fab in late 2010.
"This is a significant milestone on the road to high-volume
28nm manufacturing and technology leadership for
next-generation products ranging from smart mobile devices to
high-performance wired applications," said Mojy Chian, senior
vice president of design enablement at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "By
working closely with ARM in the early stages of technology
qualification, we will enable our customers to rapidly bring
their ARM Cortex-A9 designs with ARM physical IP to production
by setting a new standard for performance and
power-efficiency."
The TQV design uses a fully optimized ARM Cortex-A9 physical IP
suite, including a full range of standard cell libraries,
high-speed cache memory macros for L1 and density-optimized
memories in other areas. It is designed to emulate a
product-like system-on-chip (SoC) in every way, allowing for
maximum frequency analysis and short turnaround time between
design cycles. A complete range of Design for Testability (DFT)
features enables Silicon-Spice correlation of Cortex-A9
critical paths and bit-mapping of cache memories at gigahertz
speed.
The TQV will be based on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm High Performance
(HP) technology targeted at high-performance wired
applications. The collaboration also will include the 28nm High
Performance Plus (HPP) technology for both wired and
high-performance mobile applications, and the Super Low Power
(SLP) technology for power-sensitive mobile and consumer
applications. All technologies feature GLOBALFOUNDRIES? Gate
First approach to HKMG.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM first unveiled the details of their
leading-edge SoC platform technology in Q3 2009. The companies
project the new chip manufacturing platform will enable a 40
percent increase in computing performance, a 30 percent
decrease in power consumption, and a 100 percent increase in
standby battery life when compared to the 40nm technology
generation.
Development of 90nm Flash Memory Technology
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Freescale Semiconductor also announced
plans to bring a new class of thin film storage (TFS) flash
memory products to market on 90nm technology. The technology is
expected to be deployed in Freescale microcontrollers (MCUs)
targeted for applications ranging from consumer electronics and
household appliances to medical devices and smart metering
systems.
Freescale?s TFS technology with FlexMemory
capability?configurable electrically erasable programmable
read-only memory (EEPROM)?is used in both the ColdFire+TM and
Kinetis families of 32-bit MCUs. This next generation
non-volatile memory (NVM) technology based on the thin film
storage concept will be manufactured on GLOBALFOUNDRIES? 90nm
technology. Early test chips are already in production at
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 7 in Singapore, with technology
certification expected to complete in the first half of 2011.
90nm TFS technology differs from other conventional
non-volatile memory architectures in that it uses an innovative
silicon nano-crystal technology to provide a scalable
technology with excellent bit-level reliability, speed, power
and area. |
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