TSMC company held a meeting with journalists, which talked about the production plans for the next two years. It is interesting that journalists were prohibited to take photos of sketches. In general, the company has confirmed the previously released plans to begin production of 10-nm FinFET decisions before the end of the year and experienced the release of 7-nm FinFET semiconductor - in the first quarter of 2017. Longtime partner TSMC - manufacturer of FPGA-matrices company Xilinx - so confident in the progress of the development of new technologies, they decided to skip the production of 10-nm FPGA and just focus on the issue of 7-nm solutions.
In addition to the development of new technological standards the company is preparing improved 16-nm process 16FFC. Process technology 16FFC earn roughly in the middle of next year. When issuing semiconductors using 16FFC number of photomasks operations will be reduced by about 10 cycles, which promises to significantly reduce the cost of production. Recall, starting with 20-nm, and 16 nm process - it is almost the same 20-nm process technology, to create a critical layers using two photomask. 16FFC process technology promises to be easier, although the release of 7-nm solutions require three projections for each critical layer.
By the way, TSMC did not rule out the possibility that for the manufacture of critical layers of 7-nm solutions will be used EUV-scanners. At the same time, TSMC provides clearly understand that, on the basis of today's realities, 7-nm process technology is being developed with the use of 197-nm immersion lithography.
TSMC does have on hand ready projects that allow to evaluate the quantitative characteristics. Thus, compared with solutions of 10 nm 7 nm chips fall by 40-45% smaller in size and provide a 10-15% increase in performance, or 25-30% reduction in consumption.