Maybe you’ve read the announcements of the 90- and 65-nanometer platform, but what does it all mean? Is IBM opening its process technology to outside companies? Chartered’s Walter Ng puts it into perspective — including where Samsung and Infineon fit in.
There are several foundries e.g. SMIC, which advertise their processes as TSMC-compatible. Since TSMC is the largest foundry company in the world (at least one, which fabricates 3rd party chips), their flows are quite widely known and used across the industry. As mentioned in the article it is quite important to have a second source for producing chips, so if you design for TSMC processes and can produce your ICs somewhere else.
But it is a good thing that the companies start seeing, that development of small technologies is so research-intensive that they can do it only with combined forces. An old saying of semiconductor industry is that semiconductor producers are like a gang bang, everybody with everyone. This is really true.
Regards,
Anton
In ’80 IBM PC compatible.
Now POWER compatible platform.