The Importance of Understanding Process Technology
Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP
From my last two blogs regarding Moore’s Law, I think the title of this entry is somewhat self evident. In those postings, I talked about the physics that are changing the way we approach IC design. The obvious (to me anyway) offshoot of that is that being a leader in process technology is vital to understand and meet the demands of the new digital (not to mention analog) devices that thrive on SoCs: DaVinci technology is an obvious example.
Ownership of the fab is the key. This is a hot-button issue given that many companies outsource fabrication to countries like Taiwan and China. Let me say at once that it is easy to decide to do process technology, it’s hard to do it well. Whether a company can actually produce the chips that work in its own lab environment should be an important factor when choosing a technology partner.
Not to turn this into a commercial, but TI has been a leader in process technology and has owned fabs as long as I have worked there. Currently, 130nm is the workhorse in production, 90nm is well into mass production, and 65nm is ramping up for a few devices right now as well. The 45nm node is on the horizon, and we still have a long way to go before we run out of room.
The bottom line is that we are putting millions of transistors on the silicon, which would be worthless if we couldn’t be sure that all the components work together optimally. An outsourced fab cannot possibly have the same level of knowledge as a company that has invested heavily in understanding the physics I have outlined previously. Furthermore, there has to be a tie between IC design and process design. You really can’t have one without the other: love and marriage, horse and carriage and all that (My apologies to Frank Sinatra).
So, continuing to drive process design innovation is a key for us. But it cannot be done in a vacuum. There has to be the cross-pollination that can only occur within a company that understands the issues facing application designers, the issues facing IC designers and issues regarding the fab. Even the smallest disconnect can mean the loss of millions of dollars, thousands of staff hours and hundreds of hairs from the heads of management (bald managers excluded).
So, I am a believer that choosing a vendor that understands process technology as well as chip design will be a crucial part of my success as a system designer.