TSMC 28nm process winning geometry?

At the recent TSMC 2011 technical seminar, TSMC’s CEO Zhang Zhongmou loudly declared that “we will not be complacent.” At the same time, he also gave speeches on various topics. The content of the speech covers this time. The impact of the earthquake in Japan, the general trend of the IC industry, the speech also pointed out that the mulberry location out of Globalfoundries, Samsung, UMC, and other competitors' weaknesses, the industry's boss "fan" is very adequate. Indeed, in the eyes of most people, they have such qualifications. However, some people think that the 28nm node and later will be hard to say. Then this brings up a question: In the end, who is the most advanced technology company in the chip industry?

From this TSMC 2011 seminar, compared with previous years, TSMC generally held several speech events and will publicly display its roadmap for process technology development in a very detailed manner. This year, the situation is different, not only in terms of the number of speech events. It is limited, and the details provided by the roadmap for the development of process technologies are also very few.

CEO of VLSI Research. Dan HutchesON said during the seminar: "A lot of people complain about the depth of the technical content of this meeting. But I think this is excusable, and TSMC is worried that revealing too many details will make opponents profit from it. ."

Not only this, but also on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. did not demonstrate a sufficient number of technical presentations and a detailed technical road map, making it difficult for the outside world to determine the state of TSMC's current process technology. On the contrary, in the eyes of outsiders, the conference is like an open critique of the joint platform alliance led by IBM.

TSMC had previously had problems in this area. In 2009, TSMC’s business volume fell sharply, and it also fell into the whirlpool of 40nm process yields. In June 2009, Zhang Zhongmou went out again. Since then, the situation of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has greatly improved. The company has not only increased the amount of capital investment and accelerated the expansion of production capacity, but also the problem of 40nm process has been relatively satisfactory, and the progress of 28nm has also been accelerated.

According to statistics of IC Insights, in 2010, TSMC was still sitting in the top spot in the chip foundry industry with sales of US$13.307 billion. This performance was 48% higher than in 2009. In comparison, UMC’s second-ranked U.S. sales were only US$3.965 billion (up 41% over 2009), and Globalfoundries ranked third was US$3.51 billion (up 219% over 2009). It can be said that TSMC The leading edge in sales is still quite obvious.

However, behind the bright sales figures, the challenges faced by TSMC are also very serious. Before the old rival UMC’s encirclement was blocked, there were Globalfinries, Samsung, and other pursuers. Zhang Zhongmou, of course, also realized this, but he couldn't help but take advantage of his opponent's enlightenment: "Some of our competitors have spent a lot of money, but there is no technical breakthrough." It means that some competitors can't wait to announce the completion of a new factory. Do you not know that these factories cannot achieve effective production capacity at all, or do not have production capacity at the production level?