TSMC, GF/Samsung Battle at 7nm

Intel may take back seat to foundries

Rick Merritt, EETimes
10/21/2016 01:09 PM EDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. — TSMC will go head-to-head with the partnership of IBM, Globalfoundries and Samsung to publicly detail rival 7nm processes at a technical conference in December. The trio’s process will use extreme ultraviolet lithography to achieve impressive gains, but TSMC likely will get to market first due to challenges getting EUV into production.

Using EUV, GF and Samsung claim they will deliver “the tightest contacted polysilicon pitch (44/48nm) and metallization pitch (36nm) ever reported for FinFETs,” in an abstract for the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM).

The pitches leapfrog the 56nm gate pitch Intel announced in August for its 10nm process, claiming industry-leading density for the node it aims to have in production next year. Observers have started to suggest both TSMC and Samsung might leapfrog Intel which has slowed the pace of releasing new process technologies as progress in Moore’s law becomes more complex and costly.

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