7nm progress

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has started commercial production of chips built using 7nm process technology.

TSMC will tape out more than 50 chip designs with its 7nm process technology by the end of 2018, Wei said. AI, GPU and cryptocurrency applications take up the majority of the tape-outs, followed by 5G and application processors.

TSMC will also start taping out chips built using an enhanced 7nm node with EUV in the second half of 2018.

5nm plans

TSMC's 5nm node's risk production is scheduled to kick off in the first half of 2019, with mass production at the end of the year or the beginning of 2020,

New tech to pack more stuff

At this week’s 2018 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, imec, the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technology, will present a process flow for a complementary FET (CFET) device for nodes beyond N3. The proposed CFET can eventually outperform FinFETs and meet the N3 requirements for power and performance. It offers a potential area scaling of both standard cells (SDC) and memory SRAM cells by 50%.

https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-presents-complementary-fet-cfet-as-scaling-contender-for-nodes-beyond-n3

10nm Ice Lake based Xeon chips are postponed, They won't appear in 2019 and could be moved as far as 2021-22.

Intel expect no progress with 10nm until second half of 2019, at best

Servers processors plan

In perspective

Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.

Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Five little Soldier Boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one .

One little Soldier Boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

According to our sources, ATIC (Which owns about nine-tens of Globalfoundries) is in the process of looking for potential buyers for GlobalFoundries.

Nice.

So from 4 remaining competitors:

• GlobalFoundries cancelled new technology, out of competition and will do 14nm and less only
• Intel has huge issues with 10nm (it is actually same or even better than others 7nm)
• TSMC use huge Apple money and seems to be on track for 7nm (yet not fully true 7nm)
• Samsung is similar to TSMC, but can also use their own big smartphones profits

Industry rumors are that Intel 10nm won't be usable for any 4 core or better CPUs for at least 2020.

Company has extreme problems with 10nm that they can't solve for many years.

Just wow!

SemiAccurate has learned that Intel just pulled the plug on their struggling 10nm process. Before you jump to conclusions, we think this is both the right thing to do and a good thing for the company.

For several years now SemiAccurate has been saying the the 10nm process as proposed by Intel would never be financially viable. Now we are hearing from trusted moles that the process is indeed dead and that is a good thing for Intel, if they had continued along their current path the disaster would have been untenable. Our moles are saying the deed has finally been done.

Intel managers decline this

Media reports published today that Intel is ending work on the 10nm process are untrue. We are making good progress on 10nm. Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared during our last earnings report.

3nm aka the wall aka final stop

Dr. Jung also introduced some of recent research and development in future silicon technology, including MRAM, a non-volatile memory solution embedded in conventional logic process, and 3nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology.

MRAM is one of the examples of new semiconductor devices that consume much less power. As memory density becomes higher, MRAM’s power efficiency becomes more prominent, consuming only 0.5% of power compared to SRAM at 1,024Mb. MRAM also has smaller cell area, which allows design flexibility.

Samsung’s unique GAA technology called Multi-Bridge-Channel FET(MBCFET) uses vertically stacked multiple nanosheet channels. With variable width of nanosheet, this technology provides not only optimal performance and power characteristics, but also high design flexibility. Furthermore, MBCFET is fabricated using 90% or more of FinFET process with only a few revised masks, allowing easy migration.

With one of its newly published papers at 2018 IEDM, Samsung Electronics shared the development progress of 3nm, a successful demonstration of fully functioning high-density SRAM circuit. The development of Samsung’s first process node applying MBCFET technology is on schedule.

More optimism before collapse into the wall

Intel 3D stacking tech, nothing new

Note that it is badly suited for high performance chips due to cooling problems.

More on marketing

TSMC’s 7nm is not denser than Intel’s pending 10nm node. Intel’s 10nm process is actually denser than TSMC’s 7nm process – Intel's 10nm (6T) process is 100 mega-transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm2), while TSMC's 7nm (7.5T) weighs in at 66 MTr/mm2.