Panasonic and Renesas have completed their joint development line for 32 and 28nm SoC fabrication at Renesas 300mm facility at Naka, Ibaraki Prefecture, which will start operations on October 1, 2009. The companies did not give guidance on when volume production at the 32nm would begin, though they said this was targeted for the ‘near future.’
Renesas transferred some 300mm tools from its Kitaitami facility to Naka for the development line as well as both companies installing new equipment. The companies did say that full process integration work for 28nm process manufacturing technologies would now be undertaken at the facility and expected a faster roll-out as the development line was now 300mm wafer based.