We repeatedly noted that AMD and NVIDIA companies will propose the first 40 nm chips in the following half-year, but here information about their characteristics and announcement periods are not clear.
AMD and NVIDIA will release 40 nm video chips using TSMC services, in this case AMD will release a part of orders in its factories, : foundry company.
At the beginning of 2010 AMD will master the production of 32 nm chips using its own factories. Today associate with reference to TSMC reported that the company approaches the mass production of 40 nm products.
All qualification measures were completed in October, and now TSMC was ready to assume orders from strange companies for the production of 40 nm chips. In the number of TSMC customers, besides AMD and NVIDIA, we have Altera, Broadcom, LSI, Marvell, NXP, ST and Sun. The technical process 40G will allow to release 40 nm chips like the graphic core, and the technical process 40LP will allow the reelase of chips with low energy consumption level - for example telecommunication devices.
TSMC plans to pass from 40 nm to 32 nm technical process without excessive expenditures, and here the introduction of 28 nm technical process will cost a lot more. Within the 28 of technical process TSMC will combine usual oxynitride silicon and transistors with the metallic lock, and also materials with the high dielectric constant value (high- k). The influence of economic crisis on entire industry, in the opinion OF TSMC, will be expressed in reduction of production volumes by up to 7-9%. Producers are present forced to get rid from surpluses production. This factor will hold in control the rates of semiconductor industry recovery for some time. In the current block the factories load level (semiconductor production ) can be lowered to 75% from the maximum.