Globalfoundries and Samsung Electronics have jointed announced they expect to broaden collaboration, and synchronize global semiconductor fabrication facilities to produce chips based on a new high-performance and low-leakage 28nm HKMG technology. The technology has been specifically developed for mobile device applications, offering 60% of active power reduction at the same frequency or 55% of performance boost at the same leakage over 45nm LP SoC designs.
In 2010, Globalfoundries and Samsung announced a fab synchronization on low-power 28nm HKMG technology in collaboration with IBM and STMicroelectronics. This low-power technology is qualified and fully design enabled with standard cell libraries, memory compilers, and additional complex IP blocks.
The high-performance offering announced recently complements the low-power technology, extending the frequency of operation for high-performance smartphones, tablets and notebooks, while retaining ultra-low leakage transistors and memories to enable the long battery life needed for mobile environments.
By virtue of the synchronization, the collaboration presents a "virtual fab" that derives manufacturing capacity from four geographically diverse fabs, Globalfoundries said in a statement. Each company has two 300mm fabs that will qualify the technology: Globalfoundries Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany and Fab 8 in Saratoga County, New York; and Samsung S1 in Giheung, Korea and the company's recently expanded fab, S2 in Austin, Texas.
The new high performance process is based on the 28nm gate-first HKMG technology utilized for the low power process announced in 2010. As with the low power 28nm technology that is fully design-enabled today, a comprehensive system-on-a-chip (SoC) design platform will be implemented for the high performance offering to enable seamless customer design-in to the multiple global manufacturing sites.