Renesas and TSMC collaborating on MCU ecosystem

Renesas Electronics Corporation and TSMC are extending their microcontroller technology collaboration to 40 nanometer (nm) embedded flash (eFlash) process technology for next-generation automotive and consumer applications. Renesas previously agreed to outsource MCUs to TSMC using 90nm eFlash process technology.

“Based on what we have learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake last year, which brought major impacts to several of our manufacturing sites and our customers businesses, we have been accelerating the construction of the ‘fab network’ as part of the company’s business continuity plan (BCP),” said Renesas senior VP Shinichi Iwamoto. “In order for us to achieve further global growth, we are confident that TSMC will provide us with significant benefits in accelerated time-to-volume production and maximum flexibility in addressing the volatile fluctuation of the market demand,”

Renesas and TSMC will combine Renesas’ MONOS (Metal-Oxide-Nitride-Oxide-Silicon) technology with TSMC’s CMOS process technologies, and by making the MONOS process available to other semiconductor suppliers, Renesas and TSMC aim to set up an ecosystem and further widen the customer base.

MONOS is a structure in which each transistor in the flash cell consists of three layers—oxide, nitride, and oxide—on a silicon base, with a metal control gate at the top. Renesas successfully extended the technology by developing a split-gate (SG) structure suitable for MCU internal flash memory. The new “SG-MONOS”-type flash memory realizes MCUs with high reliability, high speed and low power consumption.

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2. Renesas Electronics Corp. launches 40nm MONOS embedded flash IP for real-time automotive applications
3. Renesas V850 MCUs target body segment