IBM, Global Foundries Moving to Gate-Last Technology for 20nm

"We have multiple customers engaged on Gate First 32nm/28nm as does Samsung (who made this disclosure with us yesterday)," Carvill concluded.

Now that Samsung and GlobalFoundries are shipping 40 nanometer-LP wafers and showing production wafers for 32 nanometer SOI, 28 nanometer-HP, 40 nanometer-G and 28 nanometer-SLP, their management and scientists decided there was more than enough time to begin work on the 20 nanometer Gate-Last transition. Gate-Last technology is supposed to offer a better choice of transistors for high performance.

The graphic for the production timeline showed the Process Design Kit is scheduled for next month, with their Multi-Project Wafer shuttle to arrive by summer of 2011. It also revealed an estimated "risk production" by summer of 2012 and "early production" in the first quarter of 2013. That could translate into an ARM IP-based, Cortex A-15 quad-core chip built with 20 nanometer technology showing up in smartphones, tablets, netbooks and entry-level desktop computers by CES 2014.

As of our publication deadline neither the press people from Common Platform nor Global Foundries were able to provide promised reference and visual materials. There are a huge number of leading edge slides we hope will become available, since photography was curtailed at the event by the Alliance's minders.