Peter Clarke, EETimes
5/17/2012 12:55 PM EDT
LONDON – Chip foundry United Microelectronics Corp. has been the leading beneficiary of 28-nm chip supply shortages at the leading foundry and rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to a Taiwan Economic News report.
UMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan), ranked as the second largest pure-play foundry firm, has 80 tape-outs for the 28-nm manufacturing node, the report said referencing un-named industry executives. UMC entered production in the first quarter of 2012 although this was with a conventional polysilicon/silicon oxynitride gate stack rather than the high K metal gate (HKMG) stack used by TSMC at 28-nm.