Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has secured 12nm chip orders from Nvidia, MediaTek, Silicon Motion Technology and HiSilicon for the fabless firms' different chip products, according to industry sources.

TSMC's 12nm process could stop Samsung and Globalfoundries from expanding their respective 14nm and 12nm FD-SOI process businesses, said the sources. TSMC's 12nm process is a smaller version of the foundry's 16nm technology, which is already offered in three process variants, and comes with lower leakage and better cost characteristics.

Nvidia will use TSMC's 12nm process to fabricate graphics processors for AI computing and self-driving cars, while MediaTek plans to roll out a SoC series built using TSMC's 12nm process technology, the sources noted.

Memory device controller IC supplier Silicon Motion has plans to roll out five SSD controller series in 2017 with the chips manufactured using TSMC's 28nm process technology, the sources indicated. Silicon Motion is looking to introduce its second-generation enterprise SSD controller series that will also be fabricated by TSMC using the foundry's 12nm process in 2018, and will also adopt TSMC's 12nm process to make its new-generation client SSD controller and UFS products, the sources said.

As for TSMC's 10nm process, the node technology has obtained orders from Apple, MediaTek and HiSilicon, according to the sources.

TSMC has begun 10nm chip production for Apple's next-generation iPhone 8 series, the sources said. Production was once affected by issues involving stacking components in the backend integrated fan-out packaging process, but they have already been solved, the sources said.

In addition, MediaTek originally had plans to roll out two 10nm series - the X30 and P35 - but the plans for the latter chip have been called off due to lack of support from its major customers, the sources said.

By: DocMemory
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