UMC is currently producing 28nm chip and is fast-achieving FinFET process

Date: 16/07/2013
The Taiwan based foundry beast United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) is working hard to make chips in deeper nodes. It has lost its 2nd biggest foundry ranking after the GlobalFoundries was spinned out of AMD and has acquired another big foundry Chartered Semiconductor of Singapore. UMC is now working hard to regain its share.

UMC has 10 Fabs for various nodes starting from 0.45 Micron to 28nm. UMC is producing 28nm chips from its Fab 12A 300mm with wafer capacity of 55K wafers/month at Tainan, Taiwan

UMC has adopted the Cadence “in-design” and signoff design-for manufacturing (DFM) flows to perform physical signoff and electrical variability optimization for 28nm designs. UMC is carefully selecting tools and platforms for 28nm in such a way that it offers cost advantage over other foundries such as TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Samsung for its 28nm customers.

UMC is speeding fast in building FinFET based fabs at node of 14nm/10nm by joining IBM chip alliance.

UMC said it will continue to improve its internally developed 14nm FinFET to offer industry competitive low-power technology enhancements for mobile computing and communication products. UMC's 14nm FinFET and 10nm implementation to take place at its Tainan, Taiwan R&D site.

UMC has announced it has successful tapeout of UMC's first process qualification vehicle in its 14-nanometer (nm) FinFET process utilizing Synopsys' EDA solution.

"The successful tape-out of this qualification vehicle is a significant milestone for UMC," said Arthur Kuo, UMC vice president in charge of the company's corporate marketing division. "Our goal is to provide customers with a highly competitive FinFET technology"