This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Silicon wafer

As the footstep of Moore's Law advances accept slowed, and the benefits of each new node accept gotten steadily smaller, nosotros've seen the various foundries adopt different ways of dealing with the problem. Intel has pursued traditional scaling, but is spending longer at each node. But companies like Samsung, GlobalFoundries, and TSMC accept defined a organisation of brusk and long-lived nodes, with different characteristics and their own individual roadmaps for how long each node will last.

Unlike TSMC and Samsung, both of which have 10nm products on their roadmaps, GlobalFoundries opted to leap directly for 7nm after licensing 14nm production from Samsung. It was an ambitious move for the foundry, which had bug with its initial roadmap after spinning itself off from AMD and eventually had to drop its own 14nm XM procedure plans in favor of a Samsung licensing deal. With 7nm, GlobalFoundries is planning to develop its own process technology and rollout schedule. Nosotros've previously talked well-nigh the company'due south plans for a 2H 2022 high volume manufacturing start, but Anandtech has additional details on how the 7nm rollout will be handled.

In the table above, DUV refers to Deep Ultraviolet lithography, or the electric current 193nm lithographic systems already in use. GlobalFoundries get-go 7nm endeavour volition use conventional lithography, with either sixty pct reduced power or xl percentage improved performance.

The introduction of EUV into 2nd-generation 7nm isn't actually expected to ameliorate device performance or power consumption. The goal here is to innovate EUV to reduce reliance on triple and quadruple patterning. Right now, these techniques are required to utilise a 193nm excimer laser to etch features at such tiny sizes, but they drive upward mask counts and manufacturing costs. GlobalFoundries does note that the yield improvements expected from using EUV (assuming the applied science is ready on-schedule) could allow for superior binning and allow some device enhancements for that reason.

GF-7nm

Finally, there's a third generation of 7nm planned, with improved line border roughness, uniformity, and other refinements that deal with some of the issues that currently plague EUV production. The company isn't characterizing its expected gains from these changes, other than to say that it should exist able to offer lower ability and higher performance in 3rd-gen EUV compared with previous products.

Much of this will depend on ASML, a company that makes photolithography systems for semiconductors, being able to deliver product-set up EUV on-schedule — and as we've covered earlier, that's still unproven. The company has conspicuously made progress in recent years, but we're not going to count EUV as ready for volume product until book parts are actually rolling off foundry lines.

As for GlobalFoundries, if it can stick to this three-wave pattern, information technology should be well positioned to compete with TSMC and Samsung. Here'southward hoping for a 3-mode race to side by side-generation foundry nodes rather than the (withal positive) two-manner competition we saw at 14nm.