GlobalFoundries company officially announced that designers can start creating production solutions using 7-nm process technology 7LP FinFET (Leading-Performance). It can be productive mobile SoC, server or network processors. Compared with the process technology of 14 nm FinFET, the 7LP FinFET process technology will allow to increase productivity up to 40% and reduce the solution area by up to 50%. The declared gate density (transistors) in the 7LP FinFET process technology will be 17 million pieces per mm2. This is one of the important indicators, since for a number of layers it will be necessary to use three photomasks, which will increase the cost of production. So, a two-fold increase in the volume of output from one plate can partially offset the increase in costs for the production of 7-nm chips.
The company specifies that the 7LP FinFET process technology is based on traditional immersion lithography and scanners in the 193 nm range. At the same time GlobalFoundries invests in the latest production equipment and, in particular, buys two EUV-units. Installation of EUV-scanners on the lines of Fab 8 in the US is scheduled for the fall of this year. For the processing of critical layers within the 7-nm process technology, these units will be ready somewhere in a year thereafter, but most likely, they will start commercial operations only in 2019.
The first digital projects of 7-nm solutions in the company expect to receive in the first half of next year. At the same time, the production of the experimental 7-nm chips will be organized according to the orders of the first customers. All this should happen before the middle of 2018, so that in the second half of GlobalFoundries it could start mass production of 7-nm products. Ideally, GlobalFoundries will lag behind TSMC for six months. In fact, this gap can be up to nine months.