"I wonder if UMC will really gain (or be interested in) logic designs?"
Sure it will. Consider, cutting edge 130nm can put 100 million transistors on a reasonably priced chip. By the 65nm generation, that 100 million transistors would likely be sold by someone like UMC for $6 per chip (good, tested die, but unpackaged, assuming 100% markup, excluding any IP costs). 100 million transistors would give you an access point that only needs SDRAM, external PHY for the 10/100/1000 ethernet and the radio amplifier. Or, it could give you a PDA that only needs external SDRAM and some of that cheap, high capacity write once memory for storage. If AMD and UMC license or develop a SOI eDRAM memory cell that uses the floating body effect instead of a capacitor, then that chip with 100 million transistors could have 4 meg. of very fast DRAM, 2 meg. of flash, an ARM 9 or 10 core running in excess of 500MHz, a BlueTooth or Zigby radio link and some other peripherals, so that various peripherals and appliances could exist that do their stuff and create an ad-hoc network to communicate. All you do put it on a board, give it power and a clock, and use a circuit board pattern for the antenna. It opens so many possibilities with those capabilities at that price... |
