GlobalFoundries reveals their 12nm process node

 

Globalfoundries has now unleashed their new 12nm manufacturing process, which builds upon the company’s existing 14nm tech to deliver both increased performance and increased transistor density, offering 10% and 15% gains respectively over “industry 16nm FinFET” (likely TSMC). 

 

This new node is expected to address many markets, from traditional SoC manufacturing, IoT communications and even artificial intelligence. Globalfoundries is also said to aiming to qualify this process for Automotive Grade 2 standards, which means that it should operate at between -49 and +105 degrees Celsius. 

 

This adds a lot of additional confusion to the already complex Foundry market, with both TSMC and Globalfoundries offering “12nm” branded nodes that are mere evolutions of their 16nm and 14nm nodes respectively, rather than “full nodes”. On top of this, the industry definition of what is XXnm is extremely loose, with Intel’s 14nm process offering almost double the transistor density of TSMC’s 16nm.  

 

Globalfoundries next big node is 7nm, which is expected to be ready between mid-late 2018, though it may take some additional time for yields to improve to make this process usable with larger ASICs, such as CPUs and GPUs.