IBM has now announced that it will work together with Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale to develop a new 32nm manufacturing process. The cooperation is a continuing of the 90nm, 65nm and 45nm projects that have been great successes and the new process will be used for everything from small mobile circuits to designing new supercomputers. The new technology is estimated to be operational in 2010 and will make it easier for OEMs through joint technology, but also that several companies will be able to offer identical circuits, thus making it even easier for customers to order large quantities as larger amounts can produced by several companies.
The five companies will work together to deliver industry-leading technology for high-performance and low-standby power products through:
- a focus on low cost and minimum complexity while retaining performance leadership
- implementation of new materials such as high-k/metal gate, advanced stress engineering, and extreme low-k films in the back-end-of-line (BEOL)
- state-of-the-art immersion lithography to achieve competitive density and chip size
- a focus on quality analog models for the digital communications marketplace
- providing a platform for derivative technologies such as RF CMOS and embedded DRAM, or eDRAM
In addition, by using common manufacturing electrical specifications across manufacturing platform partners, technologies can more easily be transferred between partner facilities.
