Mark LaPedus
EE Times (11/27/2006 9:00 EST)

SAN JOSE, Calif. ? Seeking to close the process technology gap with Texas Instruments Inc. and other rivals, Qualcomm Inc. is quietly accelerating its 45-nanometer design efforts and altering its foundry strategy at the advanced node.

The moves?part of Qualcomm's internally developed "integrated fabless manufacturing" (IFM) strategy?are geared to reduce the time it takes Qualcomm to adopt a process node from 15 months behind leading IDMs at 90 nm to three months at 45 nm. The strategy also aims to bridge the gap between Qualcomm's IC design and manufacturing flows.

The IFM strategy is a critical element of success for the world's largest fabless design house. With chip design costs approaching $50 million to $75 million at the 65- and 45-nm nodes, Qualcomm and other semiconductor makers must have sound manufacturing strategies in place.

In particular, fabless companies must work closely with their design automation and foundry partners. This is especially true for the 45-nm node, which is considered an inflection point in semiconductor manufacturing. At 45 nm, chip makers are introducing a handful of new, complex and costly production technologies in the fab, such as 193-nm immersion lithography, ultralow-k films and, in some cases, high-k dielectrics.

Qualcomm is currently shipping its 65-nm cellular phone chip set products. The San Diego company will shortly tape out 45-nm test chips equipped with various intellectual-property blocks. It hopes to begin sampling its initial 45-nm products for OEMs in early 2008--nearly the same time frame as TI and others.

This schedule, of course, depends upon its manufacturing partners and their ability to ramp up the complex 45-nm process. On that front, fabless Qualcomm plans to have two foundry camps simultaneously make and ship its 45-nm designs: IBM Corp.'s "fab club" and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd. (TSMC). The IBM Common Platform alliance includes three separate foundry providers using the same process: IBM, Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte. Ltd. and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Seoul).

That strategy represents a slight departure from Qualcomm's previous foundry program. For years, the company relied on two basic partners to manufacture its bread-and-butter digital baseband chips: IBM Microelectronics and TSMC. Then, at the 65-nm node, TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) became Qualcomm's "lead" foundry provider. In April, Qualcomm announced early sampling for its first 65-nm cell phone chip set, made at TSMC.