Stepping away from the current 56nm process technology, Taiwan's TSMC recently announced that it will upgrade its IC production to 45nm low-power process technology at the end of 2007 instead of in September 2007 as originally planned.

The company will upgrade further to 32 low-power process technology in year-end 2009, in a bid to boost its chip performance, according to EE Times-Taiwan. According to the same source, the company plans to make a process technology breakthrough every two years, and thus production using the 22nm process is scheduled to kick off in year-end 2011.

The new chip based on 45nm process technology will include the use of 193-nm immersion photolithography, silicon strains, and ELK (Extreme Low-k) inter-metal dielectric material, boosting the chip performance by 40% and cutting chip energy consumption by 10 to 20%, as compared to previous process technology.