Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , the world's largest made-to-order chipmaker, said yesterday that the company has produced and shipped more than 1 million 8-inch-equivalent wafers with transistors measuring 0.13 micron across.
One micron is 1 millionth of a meter, and chips with narrower gaps between transistors can perform more functions faster.
"TSMC's overall advanced technology business is growing at a significant pace," Kenneth Kin, TSMC's senior vice president in charge of worldwide marketing and sales, said in a statement.
"The shipment of 1 million 0.13-micron 8-inch-equivalent wafers is not only a production milestone, but also proves again TSMC's commitment to providing the advanced technology and manufacturing excellence that helps our customers stay competitive in their markets," Kin said.
These wafers are produced at the company's Fab 6, which runs 8-inch wafers, and Fab 12, which runs 12-inch wafers. The company completed 0.13-micron qualification and began volume production in the first quarter of 2002.
Chips produced with 0.13-micron technology are mostly used in programmable logic devices, communications infrastructure, mobile phones, graphics processors, DVD players and network processors.
Separately, United Microelectronics Corp , the world's second-largest made-to-order chipmaker, said yesterday it had secured Ricoh Co's contracts for its ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) and image processor products on 90-nanometer technology.
Ricoh will utilize UMC's advanced technology to meet the speed and performance requirements of its next-generation product lines, UMC said in a statement.
"Ninety-nanometer readiness and maturity were the key factors in our foundry-partner selection process for our upcoming product line," said Kenji Wakabayashi, general manager of Ricoh Imaging System LSI Development Center.
UMC delivered its first 90-nm customer chips in March last year. The company is now fully qualified and in volume production for a number of 90-nm customer products, it said.
This 90-nm cooperation is considered part of the business operations of the company's Japan unit UMCJ, and earnings will be counted as UMCJ revenue
