STMicroelectronics has taped out a dozen SOCs on Samsung's 32/28nm HKMG process.The chips are for mobile,consumer and network applications.
"We have successfully started production of STMicroelectronics'new-generation 32/28nm SoC products,"says Kwang-Hyun Kim,executive vice president of Foundry business,Device Solutions,Samsung Electronics.
Samsung and STMicroelectronics have developed 32/28nm High-K Metal Gate(HKMG)technology through participation in the International Semiconductor Development Alliance(ISDA)the Common Platform Alliance led by IBM.
ISDA allows participating companies to run their products in eachothers'fabs.
In addition to running 32/28nm products on bulk CMOS processes,ST taped out,earlier this month,its fist product on a fully depleted SOI(FD-SOI)process at Crolles.The product is the ST-Ericsson NovaThor integrated modem and applications processor.
The Crolles-developed FD-SOI process is currently being transferred to ST's FD-SOI foundry,Globalfoundries'fab at Dresden,where it will be ready for mass production in the second half of next year.
Jean-Marc Chery,CTO and CMO of ST reckons the Crolles 28nm FD-SOI process produces ICs with superior performance to Intel' 22nm finfet process where the drawn gate length is 26nm.
"Finfet generation 1 on bulk does not perform as well as FD-SOI performance at 28nm,"says Chery,"finfet generation 1 on 22nm is a complex technology and doesn't give the best trade off between performance and leakage."
Intel has not yet put a mobile SOC on the finfet generation 1 process,and does not intend to run a mobile SOC at the front of a node'i.e.as soon as a new generation of process is ready'until the 14nm.finfet generation 2,node.
'Finfet generation 2 on 14nm will have the same performance as FD-SOI,"says Chery,"but much more complex and with less design legacy."
