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16 nm lithography process
Revision as of 21:55, 21 July 2017 by BCD (talk | contribs) (16 nm Microprocessors)

The 16 nanometer (16 nm) lithography process is a full node semiconductor manufacturing process following the 20 nm process stopgap. Commercial integrated circuit manufacturing using 16 nm process began in 2014. The term "16 nm" is simply a commercial name for a generation of a certain size and its technology, as opposed to gate length or half pitch. This technology is set to be replaced with 10 nm process in 2017.

Industry

An enhanced version of TSMC's 16nm process was introduced in late 2016 called "12nm".

 
Process Name
1st Production
Lithography Lithography
Immersion
Exposure
Wafer Type
Size
Transistor Type
Voltage
 
Fin Pitch
Width
Height
Gate Length (Lg)
Contacted Gate Pitch (CPP)
Minimum Metal Pitch (MMP)
SRAM bitcell High-Perf (HP)
High-Density (HD)
Low-Voltage (LV)
DRAM bitcell eDRAM
TSMC
16FF, 16FF+, 12FFN
2016
193 nm
Yes
 
Bulk
300 mm
FinFET
0.75 V
Value 20 nm Δ
48 nm N/A
 
37 nm
34 nm
90 nm 1x
64 nm 1x
   
0.074 µm² 0.86x
   
   

TSMC

TSMC uses the same BEOL as its 20nm process. They named their process 16 nm which reflects those relaxed pitches. TSMC demonstrated their 128 Mebibit SRAM wafer from their 16 nm HKMG FinFET process at the 2014 IEEE ISSCC. TSMC followed their 16FF process by the 16FF+ which provided roughly 10-15% performance improvement. A final 16FFC (16FF Compact) designed to reduce cost through less masks while using half the power.

16 nm Microprocessors

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16 nm Microarchitectures

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References

  • Chen, Yen-Huei, et al. "A 16 nm 128 Mb SRAM in High-κ Metal-Gate FinFET Technology With Write-Assist Circuitry for Low-VMIN Applications." IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 50.1 (2015): 170-177.
  • Wu, Shien-Yang, et al. "A 16nm FinFET CMOS technology for mobile SoC and computing applications." Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), 2013 IEEE International. IEEE, 2013.
  • TechInsights/Chipworks, Kevin Gibb, The ConFab 2016