TSMC Launches Ultra-Low Power Platform for IoT and Wearables
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) today announced the foundry segment's first and most comprehensive ultra-low power technology platform aimed at a wide range of applications for the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable device markets that require a wide spectrum of technologies to best serve these diverse applications. In this platform, TSMC offers multiple processes to provide significant power reduction benefits for IoT and wearable products and a comprehensive design ecosystem to accelerate time-to-market for customers.
TSMC's ultra-low power process lineup expands from the existing 0.18-micron extremely low leakage (0.18eLL) and 90-nanometer ultra-low leakage (90uLL) nodes, and 16-nanometer FinFET technology, to new offerings of 55-nanometer ultra-low power (55ULP), 40ULP and 28ULP, which support processing speeds of up to 1.2GHz. The wide spectrum of ultra-low power processes from 0.18-micron to 16-nanometer FinFET is suited for a variety of smart and power-efficient applications in the IoT and wearable device markets. Radio frequency and embedded Flash memory capabilities are also available in 0.18um to 40nm ultra-low power technologies, enabling system level integration for smaller form factors as well as facilitating wireless connections among IoT products.
Compared with their previous low power generations, TSMC's ultra-low power processes can further reduce operating voltages by 20% to 30% to lower both active power and standby power consumption and enable significant increases in battery life -- by 2X to 10X -- when much smaller batteries are demanded in IoT/wearable applications.
"This is the first time in the industry that we offer a comprehensive platform to meet the demands and innovation for the versatile Internet of Things market where ultra-low power and ubiquitous connectivity are most critical," said TSMC President and Co-CEO, Dr. Mark Liu. "Bringing such a wide spectrum of offerings to this emerging market demonstrates TSMC's technology leadership and commitment to bring great value to our customers and enable design wins with competitive products."
One valuable advantage offered by TSMC's ultra-low power technology platform is that customers can leverage TSMC's existing IP ecosystem through the Open Innovation Platform(®). Designers can easily re-use IPs and libraries built on TSMC's low-power processes for new ultra-low power designs to boost first-silicon success rates and to achieve fast time-to-market product introduction. Some early design engagements with customers using 55ULP, 40ULP and 28ULP nodes are scheduled in 2014 and risk productions are planned in 2015.
"Silicon Labs welcomes TSMC's ultra-low power initiative because it will enable a range of energy-friendly processing, sensing and connectivity technologies we are actively developing for the Internet of Things," said Tyson Tuttle, Chief Executive Officer, Silicon Labs. "We look forward to continuing our successful collaboration with TSMC to bring our solutions to market."
"Built on TSMC's Ultra-Low Power technology platform and comprehensive design ecosystem, Realtek's Bluetooth Energy Efficient smart SoC, BEE, supports the latest Bluetooth 4.1 specification featuring Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and GATT-based profiles," said Realtek Vice President and Spokesman, Yee-Wei Huang. "BEE's power efficient architecture, low power RF, and embedded Flash are ideal both for the IoT and for wearable devices such as smart watches, sport wristbands, smart home automation, remote controls, beacon devices, and wireless charging devices."
"TSMC's new ultra-low power process technology not only reduces power for always-on devices, but enables the integration of radios and FLASH delivering a significant performance and efficiency gain for next-generation intelligent products," said Dr. Dipesh Patel, executive vice president and general manager, physical design group, ARM. "Through a collaborative partnership that leverages the energy-efficient ARM® Cortex®-M and Cortex-A CPUs and TSMC's new process technology platform, we can collectively deliver the ingredients for innovation that will drive the next wave of IoT, wearable, and other connected technologies."
"Nordic Semiconductor has been a pioneer and leader in ultra-low power wireless solutions since 2002, and with the launch of its nRF51 Series of Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) in 2012 the company established itself as a leading vendor of Bluetooth Smart wireless technology," said Svenn-Tore Larsen, CEO of Nordic Semiconductor. "We have been collaborating closely with TSMC on the selection of process technology for our upcoming nRF52 Series of ultra-low power RF SoCs. I am happy to announce that we have selected the TSMC 55ULP platform. This process is a key enabler for us to push the envelope on power consumption, performance and level of integration of the nRF52 Series to meet the future requirements of Wearable and Internet of Things applications."
