Globalfoundries, a contract maker of semiconductors controlled by Advanced Micro Devices and Advanced Technology Investment Company, on Wednesday announced plans to add another version of 28nm fabrication process to the roadmap. The new 28HPP will boost performance of chips compared to the typical 28nm process by 10% and will allow to make chips with 2GHz clock-speed.

The new technology will address the growing market for smart mobile devices and high-performance processors requiring more than 2GHz of processing power. The 28nm high-performance plus (HPP) technology provides a performance boost of as much as 10% over the company’s current 28nm HP offering, and offers optional ultra-low leakage transistors and SRAMs that extend the application range from high performance into the low power range. Globalfoundries plans to begin risk production using 28 HPP in Q4 2011.

In addition, a rich RF CMOS offering also is available, making the 28nm HPP technology an ideal platform for the next generation of high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) designs with a broad addressable market ranging from low-power to high-performance devices.

Globalfoundries 28nm HPP fabrication process will allow the company's customers to offer higher performance versions of 28nm HP chips later in the cycle and refresh product lineups if required without necessity to design brand new chips. Provided that Globalfoundries' 28nm HP process is on par with TSMC's 28nm HP version in terms of yields and costs, then the customers of the former will get a distinctive advantage over clients of the latter.

The new 28 HPP technology rounds out Globalfoundries’ 28nm offerings, which include the 28nm HP technology targeted at high-performance wired applications and the super low power (SLP) technology for power-sensitive mobile and consumer applications. All 28nm technologies feature gate first approach to HKMG, which offers a substantially smaller die size and cost, as well as compatibility with proven design elements and process flows from previous technology nodes.

Globalfoundries is currently accepting designs for its 28nm technologies. Multiple customer designs have already been silicon-validated, and many more product and IP test chips are being validated at the company's Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.

Tags: Globalfoundries, AMD, ATI, 28nm, TSMC, Nvidia, Semiconductor