TSMC achieves 65 nanometer embedded DRAM milestone
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. has announced what it claims to be as the foundry's industry first functional 65nm embedded DRAM customer product. The product contains millions of DRAM bits and was silicon verified first time right.
The achievement of this milestone builds on TSMC's 65nm progress that began when the company became what is thought to be the first foundry to achieve 65nm product production in the second quarter last year. The company has also been in 90nm embedded DRAM production since the first quarter of 2006. There have been rich sets of memory macros, developed by TSMC's design team, which are being used in more than a dozen of 90nm customer products.
"NVIDIA is pleased to have collaborated with TSMC on their new 65nm embedded DRAM process, which has proven to be an excellent platform for our latest handheld GPU product," said Michael Rayfield, general manager of the handheld division of NVIDIA Corporation. "The efficiencies of the embedded DRAM process allowed us to raise the bar for features found in mainstream cell phones."
"We've talked to customers and understand their needs. TSMC firmly believes that this new embedded DRAM process and IP are well suited for the demands created by the convergence of the wireless, consumer and communications devices. The results will be multi-functional computing platform that will spawn the next generation of innovation," said Jason Chen, vice president of corporate development, TSMC.
The 65nm embedded DRAM's higher bandwidth is ideal for game console, high-end networking, digital consumer, and multimedia processors. It consumes less active and stand-by power than alternative high density memory technology while eliminating the need to power up I/Os.
