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A cost competitive 20nm technology node is described that enabled industry-first 20nm cellular modem chip with 2× peak data rates vs 28nm, and 2× carrier aggregation. Process and design enhancements for layout context optimization, and continuous process improvements resulted in 18% boost in circuit performance while simultaneously achieving >30% power reduction. 3 mask local interconnect and 64nm double patterning lower level metals - with yield-friendly single color pitch of 95nm and M1 special constructs with 90nm (=gate pitch) single color pitch for cell abutment - were used for achieving ~2× gate density. Single patterning 80nm pitch metal for routing levels was optimized for both density and performance. Active/passive device and double pattern metal mask count was optimized to reach process should-cost goals. Resulting technology provides cost reduction vs 28 HKMG per close to historical trend, and also cost-competitiveness vs 28 PolySiON. Leveraging of yield learning of this common back-end metallization results in up to 6 month pull-in of 16nm Finfet node yield ramp.

In this work we have demonstrated, for the first time, a 0.605µm2 dual core oxide (DCO) dual Vdd 8T SRAM cell in 45LPG triple gate oxide CMOS process for use as L1 cache for high performance low leakage mobile applications. The DCO 8T SRAM operates under dual voltage supplies with write assist. Compared to traditional single-end 8T cell, DCO 8T SRAM showed the same performance with only half the standby leakage, and lower Vccmin. The PU Vt and dual core oxide boundary were optimized to achieve robust Vccmin, process margin and reliability. The 45LPG thin core transistors and the DCO 8T SRAM are able to achieve 1.5GHz speed with ∼500mW at 0.9V and a low Vccmin of 0.6V.