September 28, 2006 – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is stepping up its R&D efforts for leading-edge chip manufacturing, in an effort to get ahead of the field and avoid underselling competition for the 65nm node that it’s already seen at 90nm, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

TSMC’s roadmap already shows volume production of an 80nm process technology, with nVidia and ATI as major customers, and 65nm is scheduled to ramp next quarter for customers including Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Altera. Now, TSMC also plans to roll out a 55nm process technology in 2Q07 targeting logic devices including graphics chips and chipsets, according to the report. Pilot production of a low-power 55nm process is expected by 3Q07.