Analyst: UMC 28-nm roll out beating expectations

LONDON – Foundry chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp. is sampling a customer with a 28-nm application processor amid indications that the roll out of the leading-edge process technology is going better than expected, according to analysts at financial services firm Nomura Equities Research.

The application processor is believed to be the OMAP5, which is being manufactured by UMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) for Texas Instruments, the analysts said in a note to client.

They predicted that small volumes of the chip would be produced in the second and third quarters of 2012, which puts UMC about four quarters behind its local rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

However, the analysts added that this is two to three quarters earlier than they had expected UMC to produce 28-nm silicon and that this could be the result of "smoother-than-expected R&D and pilot run," and "not much delay from design and process re-work."

Both Globalfoundries and TSMC are reported to have had problems with the ramp up of their leading edge manufacturing process technologies, although TSMC has denied this, saying that yield improvement on its 28-nm processes is on course.


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Analyst: UMC 28-nm roll out beating expectations

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