TSMC Outlines 16nm, 10nm Plans

Jessica Lipsky
4/8/2015 00:01 AM EDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced plans to roll out a compact, low-power version of its 16nm FinFET process and revealed its road map for smaller process nodes. The company will begin volume production of its 16nm FinFET Plus (16FF+) in the middle of this year and break ground on a new 10nm fab next year.

A year after volume production of 20nm chips, TSMC announced it will begin volume production of its 16FF+ in the middle of 2015. TSMC claims the chips made using FinFET Plus have 10% better performance than competing silicon, consume 50% less power than a 20nm SoC, and have a cycle time twice that of 20nm chips.

The foundry will have more than 50 tape-outs by year’s end, covering applications processors, GPUs, automotive, and network processors, said TSMC President and Co-CEO Mark Liu said at the TSMC 2015 Technology Symposium Tuesday.

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