As part of the "G90" rollout, the Milpitas-based ASIC giant also expanded its silicon foundry alliance with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). Under the terms, TSMC will initially serve as the foundry and sole manufacturing base for LSI Logic's 90-nm chip designs.

Last week, TSMC disclosed details about its new 90-nm process technology. The world's largest silicon foundry plans to offer 90-nm prototyping services this quarter, with "risk production"--or early production--slated for the third quarter of 2002 (see April 9 story).

By leveraging TSMC's aggressive move into 90-nm technology, LSI Logic plans to become one of the world's first semiconductor suppliers to provide ASICs, ASSPs (application-specific standard parts), SoCs, and related integrated circuits, based on 90-nm technology, said Ronnie Vasishta, vice president of marketing for the company.

And surprisingly, said Vasishta, the market is ripe for 90-nm ASIC and SoC designs despite the fact that LSI Logic is still ramping up production of ICs, based on its own, 130-nm (0.13-micron) process technology--called Gflx.

Hsinchu, Taiwan-based TSMC is also the foundry for LSI Logic's Gflx technology. Last year, the two companies struck a major deal, announcing a new version of Gflx, based on TSMC's copper and low-k dielectric technologies. The copper technology is modified to include LSI Logic's front-end-of-line transistor process modules (see April 4, 2001, story).

"Our 0.13-micron technology is ramping up," Vasishta said. "If we are not the first, we will be among the first to provide 90-nm ASICs and SoCs," he told SBN in an interview at the company's headquarters here last week.

Hoping to beat its competitors to the punch at the 90-nm node, LSI Logic will release an ASIC design kit product offering to enable "early designs" starting this July. The kit includes ASIC libraries, memory cores, I/Os and phase-lock loop (PLL) building blocks. The Silicon Valley company plans to deliver 90-nm ASIC/SoC prototypes in the first quarter of 2003, with production slated in the second quarter of next year.

Other ASIC/SoC vendors--including IBM Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., NEC Corp., and STMicroelectronics Inc.--have also announced or dropped hints that they are working on their 90-nm technologies as well. Some suppliers are also working with TSMC at the 90-nm node, including NEC, Motorola, Philips, and STMicroelectronics.

Looking for a boost

LSI Logic's "G90" offering is expected to bolster its overall position in the market, according to analysts. In 2001, the company was the world's third largest supplier in terms of sales in the combined ASIC/programmable logic device (PLD) market, according to Dataquest Inc. of San Jose. With sales of $1.243 billion in this sector for 2001, the company only trailed IBM Corp.'s Microelectronics Division and Agere Systems Inc. in the arena, according to Dataquest.

But in 2001, LSI Logic--as well as most other IC suppliers--saw its fortunes slide due to the current chip downturn. The company's total ASIC sales fell 38.2% last year, from $2.01 billion in 2000 to $1.243 billion in 2001, according to Dataquest. In fact, IBM was the only company that grew in this sector last year (see April 3 story).

Pulling LSI Logic down last year was a steep downturn in its core communications chip business, but the company's consumer IC and storage businesses were relatively healthy in 2001 (see Sept. 7 story).

"Now, we're seeing a pickup in demand for communications," said Vasishta. "We're still seeing growth in our consumer business."

There are also other encouraging trends in the marketplace as well, especially in the traditional ASIC business. "Many customers were engaged with the COT (customer owned tooling) model at 0.18-micron technology," the LSI Logic executive explained. "Companies could afford to buy their own EDA (electronic design automation) tools and design their own products."

But with the advent of complex chip designs at the 130-nm node and below, LSI Logic claims that system houses are migrating back to the ASIC houses. The company and its ASIC rivals are said to provide a seamless "one-stop shop" of services in the IC supply chain, such as chip design, manufacturing, and even packaging.

System houses are looking for the traditional ASIC providers to solve a major problem in the industry: the IC design bottleneck. "The design is the bottleneck in industry. The process technology is not the bottleneck," Vasishta said. "As a result, the full-service ASIC model is gaining traction again."

This is not to say that LSI Logic is downplaying the importance of process technology in the ASIC design chain. In fact, LSI Logic will not offer 90-nm chip designs within its own fabs "until there is a market requirement" according to the LSI Logic marketer.

LSI Logic and TSMC co-developed the "G90" process platform, which is "compatible" with TSMC's CLN90G technology. CLN90G is TSMC's "general-purpose" 90-nm technology. The low-voltage, nine-layer-metal technology features 65-nm (0.065-micron) gate lengths and a six-transistor SRAM bit-cell size, measuring less than 0.99 micron².

Pushing to 1 billion transistors

The "G90" product offering not only includes advanced process technology, but it also features LSI Logic's intellectual-property (IP) cores, IC building blocks and design methodologies. And in theory, "G90" can enable ICs that hit the 1-billion transistor mark, but the company does not expect many orders for these types of complex chip designs.

Instead, the company is gearing the technology for a range of chips, including for 10- and 40-gigabit-per-second communications applications. In another example, the "G90" technology could enable a circuit with 64 million logic gates and 100-megabits of SRAM running up to 800-MHz--on the same device, according to the company.

The sweet spot of the technology are devices with "anything from 3 million to 20 million logic gates," Vasishta said. "We could anything up to 64-megabits of memory. Most companies will develop embedded RISC designs at 300-to-333-MHz," he said.

To help enable these designs, LSI Logic has extended its "Flexstream Design Solution" to the 90-nm node. This design methodology includes everything in the ASIC/SoC supply chain: design services, ASIC libraries, and packaging technologies.

The solution also utilizes the company's venerable and massive IP building block portfolio, dubbed CoreWare. The IP portfolio includes embedded RISC processors from ARM Ltd. and MIPS Technologies Inc. It also consists of its own digital signal processors, called ZSP.

"Flexstream links everything together," said Jeff Vanderlip, director of ASIC technical marketing at LSI Logic. "But we can also take scribbles on a napkin from a customer and bring a product to market," Vanderlip added in an interview with SBN.