IBM, Chartered extend development collaboration to 22 nm

Development activities will continue to be performed at IBM's 300-mm fab, with each company having the ability to implement the jointly developed processes in its own manufacturing facilities.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 4/2/2008

Building on their original multiyear agreement going back to November 2002, technology giant IBM Corp and dedicated semiconductor foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing today announced they are extending their joint development collaboration to include 22-nm bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

Now in its sixth year, Chartered noted that the collaboration with IBM has allowed it to provide foundry access to IBM’s technology roadmap that spans five major generations of advanced process technology, including 90-, 65-, 45-, 32-, and now 22-nm logic processes.

Gary Patton, VP of IBM’s semiconductor R&D center, said the expanded collaboration demonstrates that a long-term collaborative model for semiconductor research and development yields significant opportunities to improve application performance and cost.

“Going forward, it will be material science invention that will improve silicon performance while the collaborative model mitigates the escalating cost of technology and design and improves time to manufacture,” he said in a statement.

Development activities will continue to be performed at IBM’s 300-mm semiconductor fab in East Fishkill, NY, with each company having the ability to implement the jointly developed processes in its own manufacturing facilities.

“Our relationship with IBM and our flexible Common Platform access provides Chartered’s customers an assured process roadmap that leverages IBM’s technology invention in silicon that is first proven in manufacturing at the Albany Nanotechnology Center and then becomes the basis for our joint process integration with our partners,” Liang-Choo “LC” Hsia, senior VP of technology development at Chartered, added in the statement. “At a time when our customers are just gaining access to the most innovative foundry process in the industry at 32 nm, we can now assure them continued customer-centric solutions well into the next decade with 22 nm."