TSMC 28nm Technology

TSMC's 28nm technology delivers twice the gate density of the 40nm process and also features an SRAM cell size shrink of 50 percent. The low power (LP) process is the first available 28nm technology. It is ideal for low standby power applications such as cellular baseband. The 28LP process boasts a 20 percent speed improved over the 40LP process at the same leakage/gate. The 28nm high performance (HP) process is the first option to use high-k metal gate process technology. Featuring superior speed and performance, the 28HP process targets CPU, GPU, FPGA, PC, networking, and consumer electronics applications. The 28HP process supports a 45 percent speed improvement over the 40G process at the same leakage/gate. The 28nm low power with high-k metal gates (HPL) technology adopts the same gate stack as HP technology while meeting more stringent low leakage requirements with a trade of performance speed. With a wide leakage and performance spectrum, N28HPL is best suitable for cellular baseband, application process, wireless connectivity, and programmable logics. The 28HPL process reduces both standby and operation power by more than 40%. The 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (HPM) provides high performance for mobile applications to address the need for applications requiring high speed. Such technology can provide the highest speed among 28nm technologies. With such higher performance coverage, 28HPM is ideal for many applications from networking, and high-end smartphone/ mobile consumer products. TSMC also provides high performance compact mobile computing (HPC) for customers looking to tap chip area and power saving benefits of mid- to low-end SoC designs. Compared with TSMC’s 28LP, 28HPC provides 10% smaller die size and more than 30% power reduction at all levels of speed. A comprehensive 28HPC IP ecosystem is also built and compatible with 28HPM, accelerating time-to-market for customers. 28HPC is also ideal for many applications from mid and mid-to-low end smartphone, tablet and mobile consumer products. The 28nm family will also provide a wider variety of metal options to support a broad range of product applications for better trade-off between performance and density.

The 28nm generation represents TSMC's most energy-efficient and high-performance method of manufacturing to date. 28nm is the first generation that foundry industry starts to use high-K metal gate (HKMG) process. Still, poly/oxynitride process is offered to meet customer's time-to-market need.