December 20, 2001 — BURNABY, British Columbia — PMC-Sierra, a provider of broadband semiconductors, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced a collaboration to develop system-on-chip (SoC) products using advanced 0.13-micron technologies.

PMC-Sierra’s system-on-chip devices support multiple 3.125 Gbit/s Serial Links, SSTL2 interfaces, more than 12 Mbit of embedded SRAM, RISC Cores and greater than 4 Million logic gates on a single chip.

TSMC’s 0.13-micron process features a complete technology family, including core, high-performance, ultra-high-speed and low-power offerings. The 0.13-micron technology platform supports logic, embedded SRAM, embedded flash, and mixed-signal/RF technologies for system-on-chip applications. The process features copper interconnects and Low-K dielectrics from reduced interconnect delay.

“PMC-Sierra and TSMC are responding to our customers’ demands for higher levels of integration without a compromise of high power expenditure and large footprint,” said Greg Aasen, CEO of PMC-Sierra. “We remain committed to providing leading-edge, low-power, high-density and performance solutions on the proven CMOS technology platform. As the leader in 0.13-micron manufacturing, TSMC continues to offer a technology roadmap that keeps in step with our device innovation that includes some of the most integrated semiconductors for the Internet Infrastructure.”

PMC-Sierra is among the first companies to implement 0.13-micron system-on-chip designs with TSMC’s process technology. PMC-Sierra has used the process to develop the RM7000B (64-bit MIPS-based processor with clock speeds up to 500 MHz) and the semiconductor industry’s highest MIPS multiprocessor architecture for the communications market — the RM9000x2 (dual CPU cores running at 1 GHz). PMC-Sierra is also working with TSMC to port future products to TSMC’s latest process technologies, including 0.10-micron.