Globalfoundries 12lp + promises to do battle against 7nm tsmc

GlobalFoundries (GF) announced on Tuesday the availability of a new addition to its 12 Leading Performance (12LP) platform, called 12LP +. The company claims it will have a noticeable increase in performance and a decrease in power and area. It also contains a low voltage SRAM bit cell.

GlobalFoundries announces the news of its new 12LP + process

GlobalFoundries (GF) promises much of the power and performance benefits of 7nm, but at the lower cost of the 12LP platform. It also provides a 15% increase in transistor density with this new node.

GF said that the 12LP + FinFET process provides a 20% increase in performance or a 40% decrease in power over the 12LP base platform, (which in turn provides a 10% improvement over 16 / 14nm nodes and an improvement of 15% on the scale of the logical area). That's the same amount of improvement TSMC claimed when comparing its 7nm process with 16nm.

In a statement, GF compared its new process to the 7nm process and also mentioned its lower cost: "As an advanced 12nm technology, our 12LP + solution already provides customers with most of the performance and power benefits they would expect from a process of 7nm, but their NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs will average only half, which means significant savings . ”

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Another new feature is a 0.5V SRAM cell, which GF claims is high-speed, low-power, and useful for exchanging data between memory and processor, as in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. For AI applications, GF provides a Design Reference Package and Design Technology Co-Development Services (DTCO). There is also a new interponder for 2.5D packaging to facilitate high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Lastly, the company also said that ARM has developed both Artisan Physical IP and POP IP for AI applications, which will also be available for 12LP.

GlobalFoundries is targeting AI and chips for cloud computing and said it already has multiple clients. Volume production is expected to begin in 2021.

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