by Anna Filatova
02/01/2002 | 09:20 PM
At the DesignCon 2002 in Santa Clara (California) TSMC announced that they had just made the first 0.10micron chips (copper interconnect, low-k dielectric, etc.), as EBN reports. This way the company showed their determined intention to push its technologies into the market (the company has already reported about their desire to speed up the introduction of this manufacturing process, and as we see, they haven’t changed their intentions since then).
They also claim that two separate engineering teams took part in the development of this manufacturing technology. One team works referring to the today’s standard 200mm wafers (Fab 4 in Hsinchu), while the second team works for the future, i.e. referring to 300mm wafers. The mass production of 200mm wafers with 0.10micron manufacturing technology is planned for the end of Q3 – beginning of Q4 (some trial orders will be accepted in Q2 already).<%BANNER[article]%>
By the way, let me remind you that last September TSMC suggested standardizing this manufacturing technology so that it could be open for anyone, however, no response followed. Anyway, I don’t think it could be really upsetting for TSMC...