In late August, UMC said it had reached a "milestone" of having shipped over 100,000 wafers using the 90nm process technology, becoming a leader in terms of the total number of 90nm wafers shipped as well as in revenue generated from 90nm sales.
As TSMC enjoys high satisfaction from such key IC designing houses as TI, ATi, nVidia, Microsoft Corp, Freescale, Sony Corp and Altera, it is quite unlikely that it will lose major orders to UMC, market analysts said.
TSMC and UMC's technological lead was further proved when nVidia withdrew all its orders from IBM, which launched an aggressive campaign to wrestle orders from the two Taiwan manufacturers in 2003, and directed them all back to TSMC and UMC.
TSMC has started volume production of nVidia's orders in the third quarter of this year using the 90nm process, and UMC is set to start volume production of nVidia orders in the first quarter of next year.
TSMC's R&D efforts are producing another likely result for 2006 and beyond: merging IC process technology with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), a platform whose market value researchers estimate will grow from US$8 billion this year to US$14 billion by 2009, analysts said.
RSS