The semiconductor world is abuzz with companies promising to be first to create chips using tiny, 90 nanometer (nm) manufacturing technology, but officials from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC, 台積電) say that even though their production lines will be ready by the fourth quarter, customers are scarce.
"Currently, we haven't seen any real products [designed for 90nm production], not just for TSMC, but in the world," TSMC spokesman Tseng Jin-hao (
The company still plans to be ready with the technology in the fourth quarter, but customer demand will dictate how fast the company moves forward with the process, he said.
Buyers are turning to next generation chips to boost processing speed and performance, while lowering the cost of their products.
Intel Corp said it used 90nm production techniques to make a memory chip capable of storing 52 million individual bits of information on an area measuring the size of a fingernail. It packed 330 million transistors on the chip.
By the second half of next year, the world's largest chipmaker expects to mass produce its next generation Pentium4 microprocessor, code-named Prescott, using the 90nm process on dinner plate-sized silicon wafers.
"This combination will allow Intel to make better products and reduce manufacturing costs," said Chou Sun-lin, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group.
TSMC has charted a different course. The company teamed with, Royal Philips Electronics NV, STMicroelectronics NV, NEC Corp and Motorola to share R&D expenses on developing the chipmaking technique. Tseng said some of these firms will begin developing the new chips later this year, but mass production may still be sometime off.
TSMC Chairman Morris Chang (
During the company's second-quarter investor's conference, Chang said there has been less of an appetite for the latest chipmaking processes as the utilization rate for older technology remains high.
More advanced chip manufacturing processes generally command higher prices.
Mainstream chips are 180nm, 150nm and 130nm, Tseng said. Around 60 percent of the chips TSMC makes is at these levels, he said.
"Normally, two-years after a technology has been introduced, it will become mainstream," he said.
Despite the long wait for a return on its investments in 90nm technology, the company intends to continue developing leading-edge technology.
"For TSMC customers, the trend is to move to new technologies ... despite the soft spot we see in 130nm manufacturing during the third quarter," Tseng said.
TSMC's 130nm products account for only 5 percent of its total production.
The Market Intelligence Center said sales by domestic chip foundries will grow by 30 percent this year to US$7.98 billion, after dropping by over a third to US$6.13 billion last year.
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