|
UMC innovates, TSMC and SMIC litigate |
|
|
|
Nov 21, 2006 at 10:50 AM |
Several newsworthy bits have come out of three of the four leading foundry companies the past couple of weeks.
Numero uno TSMC and two of its leading competitors, UMC and Chinese upstart SMIC, all made headlines, although not necessarily in the ways one might expect.
In news that will likely put smiles on its customers' and shareholders' faces, UMC announced yesterday that it has developed functional 45-nm SRAMs using a proprietary logic process at its Fab 12A in Tainan, southern Taiwan. The company says it built bit cells of less than a quarter-micron square, employing such advanced process technologies as ultrashallow junctions, ultra-low-k dielectrics (with k values of about 2.5), and mobility enhancement techniques. UMC also took a page out of TSMC's playbook, noting that it had employed immersion lithography on 12 critical layers of the devices.
Considering that Intel announced in late January that it had made fully functional SRAMs as part of its 45-nm process development efforts, the foundry isn't lagging much behind the industry leaders. Throw in the news from a couple of weeks ago that Xilinx had taken delivery of UMC-fabbed 65-nm FPGAs (featuring a mind-boggling gate count of 1.1 billion transistors and 11 copper layers), with full production said to be several months away, and it seems like the perennial number-two is trying at least as hard as TSMC. Â
TSMC and SMIC made news of a wholly different sort late last week. In what can only be called a legal pissing match, SMIC shot back at its Taiwanese rival with a lawsuit of its own. Associated Press reported that the Chinese company alleges unfair compensation, breach of good faith, and commercial defamation. SMIC also seeks unspecified compensation and a public apology from TSMC.
Keep in mind that TSMC filed a suit of its own in August, alleging that SMIC breached the agreement that the two companies had (a deal in which SMIC more or less copped to IP-related transgressions and pays TSMC millions of dollars in fees), charging SMIC with patent infringement and misappropriated trade secrets. Naturally, SMIC denied those charges.
What caught my eye was SMIC's inclusion of "commercial defamation" and a call for a public apology from TSMC. Does this sound like a legal version of an attempt at good ol'-fashioned face saving or what? Reputation and honor are at stake, appearances remain important. As in many pissing matches, often it's not just about the money.   Â
|
Blogs 
