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MClayton
Sounds like high stakes liar's poker...like when Toshiba gave many papers on ...
pinhead
Gate first and gate last drive some very different ground rules. So never ...
Foundries not dead, just evolving, says Globalfoundries CEO
Sylvie Barak
12/13/2012 5:02 PM EST
SAN FRANCISCO--The fabless/foundry model may have its issues, but it’s a long way from being dead, said Globalfoundries CEO Ajit Manocha, speaking at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) here this week (Dec. 11).
Manocha dismissed critics who claim the fabless model is on its way to extinction, claiming instead that the foundry model is seeing huge growth rates and continuing to outpace other chip industry segments.
Indeed, it is integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), Manocha countered, who should be wary of the future. The integrated model was, he asserted, is a dead end.
While Manocha admitted the impact of mobility had certainly put pressure on the foundry model, forcing his company to pick up the pace, the CEO said Globalfoundries is poised to move to the next round of process technology nodes, even as other big foundry players drop off.
“Only four players have capabilities to offer leading edge technologies beyond 28 nm,” he said, citing, Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Globalfoundries. This, he said, made the foundry market opportunity all the more compelling and concentrated at the leading edge, with a compound annual growth rate of some 37 percent in the next three years. In terms of monetary value, Manocha said the leading edge now represented a $27.5 billion opportunity.
That’s not to say there aren't challenges to keep Manocha awake at night. He said they can be divided into technical and economic challenges. Among the technical challenges, Manocha cited achieving the required power density for optimum battery life, at a low cost, while ensuring the technology remained reliable and interconnects held up. He also cited retaining engineering talent and collaboration with clients at the earliest design stages.
On the economic side, compressed product cycles along with capacity, design and manufacturing costs are among the geographic risks affecting supply, IP and competition.
Next: Moving to Foundry 2.0
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giriscitek
12/13/2012 10:37 PM EST
Foundries need lot of money to go forward especially from 2014 because of high cost of manufacturing equipment and increased cost of living !
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the_floating_ gate
12/13/2012 10:48 PM EST
“If customers want 10-nm by next year, we’ll be there,” he concluded.
I admit I only glanced at it but this caught my eye - is he serious?
Morris Chang was talking about building a dedicated fab for large customer(s) - to me this approach is closer to the IDM model rather the foundry model.
The real economic challenge the way I see it is tremendous amount of fix cost that require very, very large unit volume ramping up quickly.
ASML made some interesting comments in regards to litho IDM process versus foundry process.
Due to design rules/shrink factor foundries would not be able to use multi patterning @14nm -
they would need EUV and it's doubtful EUV will be production worthy by that time while Intel can fall back on multi patterning
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SylvieBarak
12/14/2012 12:00 PM EST
He repeated it more than once. He also said it to press at the after session Q&A....
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resistion
12/14/2012 1:14 AM EST
I think the cost of making sub-lithographic pitch fins in FinFETs got glossed over. It would introduce double patterning even at today's 28 nm node.
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Austin Tech Watcher
12/14/2012 9:02 AM EST
IBM is not on the list of companies moving past 28nm, which revives the idea that IBM and GF will essentially merge. Or did he just forget to put them on the list?
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pinhead
12/14/2012 12:36 PM EST
I think IBM has a pretty meaningless share of the advanced node foundry business. They do develop and manufacture the technologies, but most of their capacity is for internal consumption. I assumed that this is why he left them out of his list.
I think his list is self serving anyhow. SMIC and UMC are probably both going to play in the advanced node space sooner or later (heck, UMC is probably already there).
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nano_meter
12/14/2012 4:54 PM EST
IBM would have to think long and hard before giving up control of wafer manufacturing and seeding it to a foundry like GF. The decision point for them is obviously what happens when 450 mm is required. Do they make that huge investment in another FAB ? Everyone down plays the importance of hardware in their product mix, but a great deal of their profit is generated, by, and around, system Z a unique microprocessor. Do they want to become just another foundry customer and tie their destiny to another company?
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the_floating_ gate
12/14/2012 6:38 PM EST
Solid State technology just reported that IBM presented a paper on advanced 22nm processing and they are using gate first - I repeat gate first!
I am baffled.
http://www.electroiq.com/blogs/chipworks_real_chips_blog/2012/12/ibm-surprises-with-22nm-details-at-iedm.html
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pinhead
12/17/2012 1:20 PM EST
Gate first and gate last drive some very different ground rules. So never underestimate the power of a designer to influence ground rules if he or she is intent on scaling their design from one node to the next rather than redesigning.
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MClayton
12/17/2012 4:55 PM EST
Sounds like high stakes liar's poker...like when Toshiba gave many papers on trench DRAM for next node at that time, and then stuck to planar and grabbed the market while competitors were attempting trench...one node too soon. (At least that is how I remember it long ago). R/D papers vs real fast ramp manufacturing leads to dangerous guessing. Colonel Boyd's disruptive jet dog fights in Korean war beat back the faster MIG's and saved US pilots and planes, using random "early moves" to tire the enemy, costing them the battles. Strike when the enemy is tired...or broke.
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