Recently,the head of TSMC development department said that taking commercial orders for the release of 7-nm semiconductors will begin by April next year. In general, in the first quarter 2017 TSMC will start a so-called risk-production of 7-nm chips - release small batches to debug production and specific solutions.
In addition to the actual production line for the beginning of production of chips required adequately prepared projects in the form of photomasks set . For the manufacture of photomasks, a process that can take up to three months and more, needed projects prepared by the digital chip - electronic circuits, translated into digital form. This requires designing a program with libraries of components, modules for testing and analysis, and much more with nothing. In addition, each new process technology and the features of specific lines (plants) require time and again new adaptation programs for the design of circuits.
As reported a few days ago the company Cadence, its specialists, together with representatives of TSMC almost completed the development of tools for the design of chips with 7-nm FinFET transistors and production. Company TSMC has certified new tools, and the company's customers have early access to a number of typical base units and libraries. New tools are optimized for the two platforms for the development of production of mobile solutions and for solutions from the field of supercomputing.
In addition, on the base of the proposed sets PDK (process design kit) can develop to choose between performance, die size and power consumption. The first digital 7-nm designs, which will be sent to the pilot production in the first quarter of the new year, start to arrive at TSMC company in the next three months.