When Intel opened the conference and its rivals Samsung and TSMC began mass production of 10nm, then the two companies 10nm technology than Intel's 14nm and how? Using Intel's own transistor density dimensions, their 10nm have to 14nm than Intel's advanced, and TSMC's process is the most advanced. This is the situation now.
This conclusion is not the author racking our brains, but rather Scotten Jones, who has 35 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, said that Scotten wrote a comparison of the foundry process and the 'standard node' on the SemiWiki website.
The term "standard node" was originally proposed by ASML and was calculated by some basic parameters generally agreed upon by manufacturers. It can be regarded as a true node definition instead of being advertised by various manufacturers.
On the website titled 'Standard Node Trend', Jones describes the standard nodes and their approximate timelines, as shown in the figure below. For convenience, I labeled the node name in the manufacturer's mouth .
It can be seen that Intel's 14nm really advanced than their official (according to the definition of the standard node, 14nm is actually 12.1nm), but more than the current 10nm Samsung and TSMC still lag behind.And, Scotten Jones also based on Intel's density The definition and calculation of the advanced manufacturing process of each manufacturer, the calculation results and the standard node above conclusions.
In mass production process, we can see that TSMC is more advanced.
TSMC will be the first commercial 7nm manufacturer
Intel has proud of the 'three years ahead' advantage no longer exists, even if the company can produce 10nm this year, it is still behind the 7nm TSMC (expected in the second quarter of this year, commercial).
TSMC said in its Q4 2017 lawsuit that our 7nm chipset has been successfully streamed for 10 customers and is currently validated in two different fabs for production volume in the second quarter of 18Q18. In the first quarter of 18, it is expected that For more streaming clients, it is expected that by the end of 2018, more than 50 customers will be using 7nm, mainly for mobile devices, games, GPUs, FPGAs, networks and AIs. Basically, high performance is required in almost every area Low-power products will use our 7nm.
And TSMC's rivals are not so sure, Intel 10nm when arrived? Maybe the second half of this year. Samsung? Maybe at least next year. Samsung's Exynos9810 using 10nm process, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 will also be used. Fang De? At least next year.
At the same time, TSMC will not stop at 7nm. The company plans to upgrade its 7nm process with ASML's EUV later this year to introduce 7nm +, which will be the first commercial use of EUV lithography that will allow TSMC Stay ahead.
And, almost certainly, Apple will become the major customer of TSMC 7nm, September new Apple products will be the 7nm TSMC production opportunities.
Qualcomm and Samsung
To mention Qualcomm, the company said Qualcomm and Samsung announced on February 21 that Qualcomm's future processor will use Samsung's 7nm LPP process, which will also use EUV equipment and is expected to be available in 2019. The event is at 1 It is no surprise at the end of the month that Samsung and Qualcomm announced further strategic alliance, and Qualcomm needed Samsung's help in order to face the Korean Free Trade Commission's litigation so basically it is Qualcomm and Samsung that the cooperation between TSMC and Apple .