Collaboration of 90-nanometer CMOS process among TSMC, STM and Philips

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (“TSMC”), STMicroelectronics (“STM”) and Royal Philips Electronics (“Philips”) simultaneously announced alliance of process technology in Taiwan and Europe yesterday (5^th). The three companies have successfully developed the 90-nm process technology and applied the technology to produce test chips of SRAM in Crolles, France and Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. Prototyping of 90-nm products is expected to take place in the 4^th quarter of 2002.  The three companies will also develop CMOS process to the next technology node at 65-nm and beyond.   The joint development project participated by the three companies and with the period of five years is expected to cost US$500 million, which will be shared by the three companies equally.

The collaboration project was made possible not only by integrating the three companies’ research and development teams and customer engineering organizations, but also the resources of the three companies’ associated laboratories, including Philips Research, IMEC, CEA/LETI and France Telecom R&D. Accordingly, the timing for mass production of the 90-nm processed products has been expedited.

Source: Commercial Times 03/06/2002