Despite high development costs, smaller nodes bring greater revenue per wafer.
The success and proliferation of integrated circuits has largely hinged on the ability of IC manufacturers to continue offering more performance and functionality for the money. Driving down the cost of ICs (on a per-function or per-performance basis) is inescapably tied to a growing arsenal of technologies and wafer-fab manufacturing disciplines as mainstream CMOS processes reach their theoretical, practical, and economic limits.
Data presented in IC Insights’ 2021 edition of The McClean Report (released in January 2021), notes that many fabless IC companies are clamoring to have their leading-edge devices, including high-performance microprocessors, low-power application processors, and other advanced logic devices, fabricated using 7nm and 5nm process nodes. Some of the current iterations from logic and foundry suppliers are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
