Common Platform Partners Slot HKMG Implementation
The Common Platform Technology Forum taking place today in Silicon Valley will focus on the group's practical high-k/metal gate (HKMG) option for the 32/28 nm generation. The Common Platform will feature an HKMG-only 32 nm technology, while rival TSMC said its 28 nm node will offer both HKMG and a poly oxynitride gate stack.
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor -- Semiconductor International, 9/30/2008 7:54:00 AM
The Common Platform Technology Forum taking place today in Silicon Valley — put on by Common Platform partners IBM (Armonk, N.Y.), Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. (Singapore) and Samsung Electronics (Seoul, South Korea) — will focus on the group’s practical high-k/metal gate (HKMG) option for the 32/28 nm generation.
Questioned about the 28 nm high-k/metal gate announcement made yesterday by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan), Mark Ireland, IBM’s vice president of semiconductor platforms, shrugged off the fact that the news was seemingly scheduled to break just before the Common Platform Technology Forum took place. “At IBM, with our partners, we’re more than prepared to implement HKMG,” he said, adding that over the last year they have further enhanced the offering with their partnership with ARM, the largest IP provider in the semiconductor industry. “We’re aggressively executing our strategy, and ARM is not committing to just doing the standard foundational IP libraries, but also enhanced IP that enables much higher-performing processors to leverage the benefits of HKMG.”
Ireland pointed out that while IBM continues to enable the technology, they are not the only ones in the industry committed to HKMG technology. “When we analyzed the 28 nm node using traditional poly oxynitride, we realized that it posed a much riskier path,” he said. Ireland called attention to the fact that TSMC stated that it would use high-k, but at a later time than the Common Platform partners have planned for. “Clearly, they too believe that HKMG is the answer; it just comes in later in their schedule.”
Ireland also dismissed comments by Gartner Inc. (Stamford, Conn.) analyst Dean Freeman, who said HKMG is costly at this point. “Our analysis shows that the HKMG process we’re using is simpler than using poly-SiON at 28 nm,” he said. “If you stay on poly-SiON, inevitably your process gets increasingly complex. Introducing new materials with a high-k/metal gate puts us back on the scaling path, where it broke on poly-SiON. Our view is that things will get more expensive if we stay with poly-SiON at the 28 nm node. High-k is a much simpler process.”
The Common Platform partners think that the move to HKMG should take place at 32 nm. “Certainly, 32 is the introduction point, but this is a 32/28 offering,” Ireland said. “Once you have your design in 32 nm, they can be migrated. Working with ARM in the libraries, we can bring enhanced IP to the table, where you can easily migrate those designs to 28 nm HKMG. It is a very smooth path.”
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| The Common Platform technology roadmap adopts high-k/metal gate technology at the 32 nm node. (Source: Common Platform) |
Ireland pointed out that HKGM technology brings great value, and provides a competitive edge. “There’s a whole new market emerging in mobile Internet devices. These applications are all becoming much more media-intensive, so getting more multimedia performance and longer video playtime, while keeping the power down for a mobile device — long battery life — becomes critical, and HKMG technology becomes very compelling vs. what can be had from traditional poly-oxynitride. We believe that this market will explode. Some analysts predict that by 2010 there will be more mobile Internet devices than there are PCs and laptops. This technology goes right into the sweet spot of that marketplace.”
Ireland added that the bottom line is that to continue driving power down and performance up, the gate oxide and gate length must be scaled. It was not clear how achievable this would be at 32, 28 nm. “All our partners — who ship actual products — are in agreement about the introduction of HKMG,” he said. “It’s a matter of physics. Only HKMG can bring us back on the traditional scaling path.”
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