Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and GlobalFoundries announced a new strategic collaboration to deliver global capacity for 14 nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology.<\/p>\n
The new collaboration will leverage the companies’ worldwide semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, with volume production at Samsung’s fabs in Hwaseong, Korea and Austin, Texas, as well as GlobalFoundries’ fabrication plant in Malta, officials for both companies said in a news release.<\/p>\n
GlobalFoundries also announced that Toshiba Corp. will join the company’s GlobalSolutions ecosystem of partners. As a worldwide ASIC partner, Toshiba will enable its Fit Fast Structured Array (FFSATM) and ASIC solutions based upon GlobalFoundries’ technologies and services for customers across the globe.
\nFor the first time, the industry’s most advanced 14nm FinFET technology will be available at both Samsung and GlobalFoundries, giving customers the assurance of supply coming from design compatibility at multiple sources across the globe, officials said.<\/p>\n
“Through this collaboration, we are advancing the foundry business and support model to satisfy what customers have been asking for,” the joint statement said.<\/p>\n
Developed by Samsung and licensed to GlobalFoundries, the 14nm FinFET process is based on a technology platform that has already gained traction as the leading choice for high-volume, power-efficient system-on-chip (SoC) designs, officials said. The platform taps the benefits of three-dimensional, fully depleted FinFET transistors to overcome the limitations of planar transistor technology, enabling up to 20 percent higher speed, 35 percent less power and 15 percent area scaling over industry 20nm planar technology.<\/p>\n
The platform is the first FinFET technology in the foundry industry to provide true area scaling from 20nm. The technology features a smaller contacted gate pitch for higher logic packing density and smaller SRAM bitcells to meet the increasing demand for memory content in advanced SoCs, while still leveraging the proven interconnect scheme from 20nm to offer the benefits of FinFET technology with reduced risk and the fastest time-to-market.<\/p>\n
Through this multi-year exclusive technology license, process design kits (PDKs) are available now, allowing customers to start designing with models, design rule manuals, and technology files that have been developed based on silicon results from 14nm FinFET test chips.<\/p>\n
Mass production for the 14nm FinFET technology will begin at the end of 2014.<\/p>\n
“This unprecedented collaboration will result in a global capacity footprint for 14nm FinFET technology that provides AMD with enhanced capabilities to bring our innovative IP into silicon on leading-edge technologies,” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Global Business Units at AMD. “The work that GlobalFoundries and Samsung are doing together will help AMD deliver our next generation of groundbreaking products with new levels of processing and graphics capabilities to devices ranging from low-power mobile devices, to next-generation dense servers to high-performance embedded solutions.”<\/p>\n
“This strategic collaboration extends the value proposition of a single GDSII multi-sourcing to the FinFET nodes. With this true multi-source platform, Samsung and GlobalFoundries have made it easy for fabless semiconductor companies to access FinFET technology and increase first-time silicon success,” said Dr. Stephen Woo, president of System LSI Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics. “Through this collaboration, we are advancing the foundry business and support model to satisfy what customers have been asking for.”<\/p>\n
The announcement “is further proof of the importance of collaboration to enable continued innovation in semiconductor manufacturing,” said GlobalFoundries CEO Sanjay Jha. “With this industry-first alignment of 14nm FinFET production capabilities, we can offer greater choice and flexibility to the world’s leading fabless semiconductor companies, while helping the fabless industry to maintain its leadership in the mobile device market.”<\/p>\n
The collaboration with Toshiba includes participation on multi-project wafer (MPW) runs and production wafers covering the whole portfolio of GlobalFoundries technologies, including leading-edge process nodes, officials said.<\/p>\n
Initially, the partnership will focus on implementations of Toshiba’s FFSAs manufactured with GlobalFoundries’ 65nm and 40nm low-power process technologies, with 28nm arrays to follow. Toshiba’s FFSA products–including libraries and intellectual property (IP)–allow customers to reduce development time and costs by customizing existing base wafers, choosing from a number of design platforms at GlobalFoundries.<\/p>\n
For higher-volume applications, customers can work with Toshiba’s libraries to develop fully custom system-on-chips (SoCs). With an initial product completed, customers can then leverage the embedded FFSA technology to provide quick-turn derivative products, with much lower development costs.<\/p>\n
“We are very pleased to join GlobalSolutions Ecosystem as Worldwide ASIC Partner,” said Tatsuo Noguchi, vice president, Toshiba Corp. Semiconductor & Storage Products Co.. “Our FFSATM products, developed with BaySand licensed technology and in collaboration with BaySand Inc. of the U.S., can be configured simply by customizing the design of a few metal layers, and satisfy increasing market needs for high performance and low power technologies. ”<\/p>\n
“We are excited to have Toshiba, one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies, join our GlobalSolutions ecosystem,” said Chuck Fox, senior vice president of worldwide sales at GlobalFoundries. “Toshiba has a strong track record of providing ASIC solutions throughout the world. We believe that many of our customers will benefit from the combination of Toshiba’s world-class design resources and our proven 65nm, 40nm, and 28nm process technology.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and GlobalFoundries announced a new strategic collaboration to deliver global capacity for 14 nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology. The new collaboration will leverage the companies’ worldwide semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, with volume production at Samsung’s fabs in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[66],"yoast_head":"\r\n