Samsung and Globalfoundaries will collaborate on the 14nmFinFET technology in order to increase both companies’ manufacturing capabilities.
The process, which is based on a technology platform that has already gained a market for high-volume, power-efficient system-on-chip (SoC) designs, was developed by Samsung and will be licensed to Globalfoundaries.
"This announcement is further proof of the importance of collaboration to enable continued innovation in semiconductor manufacturing," said Globalfoundries CEO Sanjay Jha. "With this industry-first alignment of 14nm FinFET production capabilities, we can offer greater choice and flexibility to the world's leading fabless semiconductor companies, while helping the fabless industry to maintain its leadership in the mobile device market."
The new collaboration will leverage the companies' manufacturing capabilities, with volume production at Samsung's fabs in Hwaseong, Korea and Austin, Texas, as well as Globalfoundaries' fab in Saratoga, New York.
The platform taps the benefits of three-dimensional, fully depleted FinFET transistors to overcome the limitations of planar transistor technology, enabling up to 20% higher speed, 35% less power and 15% area scaling over industry 20nm planar technology, according to Samsung.
The platform is the first FinFET technology in the foundry industry to provide true area scaling from 20nm. The technology features a smaller contacted gate pitch for higher logic packing density and smaller SRAM bitcells to meet the increasing demand for memory content in advanced SoCs, while still leveraging the proven interconnect scheme from 20nm to offer the benefits of FinFET technology with reduced risk and the fastest time-to-market.
Through this multi-year exclusive technology license, process design kits (PDKs) are available now, allowing customers to start designing with models, design rule manuals, and technology files that have been developed based on silicon results from 14nm FinFET test chips.
Mass production for the 14nm FinFET technology will begin at the end of 2014.