GlobalFoundries 14 nm LPP FinFET Node Taped Out, Yields Good

GlobalFoundries' move to leapfrog several silicon fab steps to get straight to 14 nanometer (nm) is on the verge of paying off, with the company taping out its 14 nm LPP (low-power plus) FinFET node, and claiming good yields on its test/QA chips. This takes the node one step closer to accepting orders for manufacturing of extremely complex chips, such as CPUs and GPUs.

AMD is expected to remain the company's biggest client, with plans to build its next-generation "Zen" processor on this node. The company's "Arctic Islands" graphics chips are also rumored to be built on the 14 nm node, although which foundry will handle its mass production remains unclear. A big chunk of AMD's R&D budget is allocated to getting the "Zen" architecture right, with key stages of its development being handled by Jim Keller, the brains behind some of AMD's most commercially successful CPU cores.

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