Well the challenge has arrived. Global Foundries are pushing 28nm technology.
An alliance of technology companies, which includes IBM, Samsung, Chartered, Infineon, STMicroelectronics and the spin-off of AMD's manufacturing operations - GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) - has announced the joint development of 28 nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process technology.
The significance of a shrink in the manufacturing process technology (the most recent CPUs are made using a 45nm process) is that it allows either an increase in outright processing performance or a reduction in the size and power required to achieve the same performance.
With GF being the sole manufacturer of AMD processors, this announcement is being viewed by many as a shot across the bows of Intel.
There's no doubt that any progress in semiconductor research from competitors to Intel is significant, but GF is now a supposedly independent semiconductor foundry and, as such, has its sights set on its own competitors, the biggest of which is TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).
For GF to be a success, it has to appeal to a lot more companies than AMD. The development of a cross-over node at 28nm (full nodes either side are 32nm and 22nm) is being positioned as significant because it may create a differentiator between GF and TSMC. If GF can use that differentiator to take customers away from TSMC, that would represent a significant achievement. [...more]
But TSMC are already expecting to have 28-nm production in Q1 2010 and are already working with customers (see here) to develop 28-nm chips. Maybe the half-node positioning at 28-nm will provide Globalfoundries with some temporary advantage (TSMC at 28-nm will be a full-node process) but they still have to sell it. The struggle will be fun to watch but as one commentor on our blog suggested, GF really have to completely dissascciate themselves from AMD to gain trust in the market. We will wait to see if that happens.
Look forward to your comments as always.
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