UMC Joins Elite Club

Kevin Gibb, Product Line Manager, TechInsights
EETimes (8/19/2015 11:39 AM EDT)

UMC joins the elite club who have mastered the gate-last metal gate (HKMG) transistor.

With the arrival of a UMC fabbed MDM9625 sporting high-k metal gates, another foundry joins the elite club who have mastered the gate-last metal gate (HKMG) transistor, the likes of which includes Intel, Samsung and TSMC.

Intel ventured into gate-last HKMG transistors in 2007 with their 45nm node processors, followed by TSMC in 2012 and Samsung in 2014. We at TechInsights note that both Samsung and GlobalFoundries began their metal gate transistors with a gate-first process at their 32/28nm nodes and then later switched to the gate last process for their 20nm process nodes.

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