SMIC's 28nm chips power mainstream smart phones

SINGAPORE: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China's largest semiconductor foundry has announced its 28 nm process technology has been successfully adopted into mainstream smart phones.

This marks a significant step in the commercial usage of 28 nm core chips, and a new era of advanced mobile phone chip manufacturing in China a release said, adding that this is another major breakthrough in the company's collaboration on 28 nm, following SMIC's announcement of successfully fabricating Qualcomm Technologies' processors at the end of last year. The technology is used for manufacturing Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processors,

Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processors, with integrated 4G LTE, offer an abundant feature set for high-volume smart phones. Compared with 40 nm technologies, processors manufactured on 28 nm have twice the logic density, are 20 to 30 percent faster, and consume 30 to 50 percent less power.

Tzu-Yin Chiu, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, SMIC, said, "The first batch that used SMIC's 28 nm node performed well, achieving recognition from Qualcomm and mobile phone manufacturers. This is an important moment for the industry's entire ecosystem, because for the first time, China's mainland manufacturers can now introduce mainstream smart phones. This marks the start of a new era of 28 nm advanced mobile phone chip manufacturing in China."

Derek Aberle, President, Qualcomm, said, "Achieving commercial usage in mainstream smart phones with these chipsets demonstrates the significant progress made by Qualcomm and SMIC in our advanced process node and wafer fabrication cooperation."