Globalfoundries challenges Intel with 14nm chip roadmap

Globalfoundries, the company that manufacturers the actual chips for companies such as ARM, Qualcomm and Broadcom has published a roadmap for their upcoming chips. Worlds second largest chip manufacturer  and spin-off from AMD will start producing 14nm chips by 2014. While the company is still scaling up the  production of their 20nm chips the company is running tests in Fab 8 located in Saratoga County,  near New York.

The 14nm manufacturing process is named 14XM, where the XM stands for Exteme Mobility.  The XM technology will be combined with Globalfoundries’  FinFET technology which can be compared to Intel’s 3D transistors.  The chips from Globalfoundries will likely not be a big threat to Intel which also hopes to produce 14nm chips in 2014, but these are mainly computer chips, where the Globalfoundries chips are mainly targeted to mobile phones and tablets.

The FinFET transistors should increase performance while decreasing power usage and according to Globalfoundries the 14nm FinFET chips should be able to consume 40-60% less watts than 20nm chips.