TSMC Denies Huge 40nm Yield Drop

From X-bit Labs: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has denied that the yields of chips made using TSMC’s 40nm fabrication process dropped substantially recently as a consequence of the company’s problems. The firm states that the yields stayed flat.

“The 40nm yield did not drop as reported. As a matter of fact, yield on the 40nm process remained flat. TSMC is confident that the 40nm yield will improve at the beginning of next year,” a spokesperson for TSMC said, reports EETimes web-site.

Late last month some web-sites reported that TSMC’s yields on the 40nm fabrication process dropped from 60% to 40% recently and that ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia Corp. were impacted. While TSMC confirmed it did have certain issues with 40nm process technology, the world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors stressed that those issues were “logistical”. Thus, TSMC wants to stress that 40nm yields now are about 60%.

On Monday TSMC announced its net sales for October 2009: on an unconsolidated basis, net sales were approximately NT$29.18 billion ($902.42 million), an increase of 4.1% over September 2009 and an increase of 2.9% over October 2008. Revenues for January through October 2009 totaled NT$225.93 billion ($6.987 billion), a decrease of 21.9% compared to the same period in 2008.

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