News Article
Sun selects TSMC to fab 45 nm and future generation processors
TSMC joins Sun and Texas Instruments partnership. Companies will combine to design, test and manufacture Sun's 45-nm processors.
Sun Microsystems Inc. announced that it had selected Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as its foundry partner for processors based on a 45 nm design as well as future generations. Sun will continue to design its chips while long time Sun partner Texas Instruments (TI) will continue to test and build the 45 nm processors in TSMC.
"After a lengthy evaluation we selected TSMC for one reason: they're simply the best at turning complex processor designs into silicon," said David Yen, Sun's executive vice president, Microelectronics group. "TSMC is already fully engaged with engineers from both Sun and TI and I expect we'll all benefit from the cross pollination of ideas among these three companies."
"TSMC, working with Sun Microelectronics as their foundry partner together with Texas Instruments, on this industry leading technology is a tremendous synergy of strengths," said Jack Sun, vice president of R&D at TSMC. "This collaboration brings together all the ingredients to successfully design, test and manufacture some of the most complex chips in the world on TSMC's CPU grade manufacturing process."
Sun, which currently designs processors based on 90 and 65 nm processes, is moving to the smaller 45 nm to allow more circuitry to be squeezed onto the same amount of silicon. The result: chip designers are free to add new features such as processing cores or encryption engines that improve overall chip performance. Importantly, the 45-nanometer design process also allows Sun to increase the number of threads per processor.
"After a lengthy evaluation we selected TSMC for one reason: they're simply the best at turning complex processor designs into silicon," said David Yen, Sun's executive vice president, Microelectronics group. "TSMC is already fully engaged with engineers from both Sun and TI and I expect we'll all benefit from the cross pollination of ideas among these three companies."
"TSMC, working with Sun Microelectronics as their foundry partner together with Texas Instruments, on this industry leading technology is a tremendous synergy of strengths," said Jack Sun, vice president of R&D at TSMC. "This collaboration brings together all the ingredients to successfully design, test and manufacture some of the most complex chips in the world on TSMC's CPU grade manufacturing process."
Sun, which currently designs processors based on 90 and 65 nm processes, is moving to the smaller 45 nm to allow more circuitry to be squeezed onto the same amount of silicon. The result: chip designers are free to add new features such as processing cores or encryption engines that improve overall chip performance. Importantly, the 45-nanometer design process also allows Sun to increase the number of threads per processor.
