TSMC company - the world's largest contract manufacturer of semiconductors - announced the preparation of three packages for the development of semiconductors with 16 nm and using the vertical FinFET transistors. Such solutions company plans to release towards the end of next year.
First, TSMC has released tools to create a 16-nm digital circuits based on FinFET. It is based on micro-architecture ARM Cortex-A15. The finer process technology more fully reveal the potential of ARM architecture , and the high degree of integration, including radio circuits and power management solutions will provide future benefits. It's great!
According to rumors circulating , TSMC company this summer signed a three-year deal with Apple to release processors with Ax rules 20, 16 and 10 nm. At the same time, TSMC is not ready to provide the tools to develop the same 16-nm-making on the base of more advanced architectures ARM, in particular - 64-bit Cortex-A50 (A57 and A53). We have no doubt in the remaining potential of architecture ARM Cortex-A15, but the same Apple is unlikely to be interested in it. AMD is also promising progress on development of Cortex-A50, but as not Cortex-A15, although it is traditionally friendly with technical processes TSMC.
Second package for TSMC 16-nm process technology steel tools for developing mixed circuits. It is a combination of analog and digital circuitry. This is a package for more flexibility developers. Finally, the third package enable the production of so-called three-dimensional semiconductor structure. We are talking about multi-chip and multi-layer stacks, connections between which are carried out through cross-cutting TSVs-channels (channels of very small diameter - up to the size of the element).