Texas Instruments Sees Its 90nm Process Performance Exceeding Earlier Generation By Over 50 Percent

"Finding effective new ways to push the performance envelope using standard CMOS without sacrificing cost, yield or reliability is what customers expect from TI," commented Hans Stork, senior vice president and director of silicon technology development. "While we explore moving to innovative new materials and transistor structures, TI continues to drive innovation using the same economical CMOS structure the industry has relied on for decades."

By pushing the parameters of its 90nm process, TI expects its transistor performance to improve over 50 percent compared to its fastest 130nm transistor. TI's highest performance CMOS logic relies on an industry leading, 37nm gate length and highly effective gate dielectric scaling to reduce capacitance and increase drive current, the primary factors in transistor switching speed, which in turn determines processor operating frequency. Other improvements combining to drive performance in both the NMOS and PMOS transistors include strain induced on the transistor channel to increase electron mobility, nickel silicide to lower gate resistance, and ultra-shallow source / drain junctions. TI also continues to drive the trend toward 2.9 k (OSG) dielectric material from 3.6 k (FSG) used in the previous generation. Low-k materials reduce capacitance and propagation delays within the interconnect layers of a device, further boosting the overall chip performance.

Sun Microsystems, the driver for TI's highest performance process technology, will take advantage of the higher operating frequencies and transistor densities made possible by TI's 90nm process on their UltraSPARC(TM) 64-bit microprocessor.

"The underlying process technology Sun receives from TI is critical to the future of Chip Multithreading (CMT) which is at the heart of our Throughput Computing strategy," said Dr. David Yen, executive vice president, Processor and Network Products group, Sun Microsystems. "The radical new designs we have planned will require the increased density and speed afforded by this new 90nm process technology, and will be key to bringing advanced UltraSPARC processors to market."

TI builds a variety of optimized process flows for each technology generation to provide the best performance for different end equipment requirements. The different flows are carefully targeted to achieve the right application balance between transistor performance and power consumption. In January TI became one of the first semiconductor companies to deliver working 90nm products with a wireless baseband chip built with a low power version of its process.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements contained in this press release regarding the future capabilities and benefits of 90nm technology and other statements of management's beliefs, goals and expectations may be considered "forward- looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. The following factors and the factors discussed in TI's most recent Form 10-K could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements contained in this press release: delays in implementation of the technology and unforeseen difficulties in new implementations. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

About Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. In addition to Semiconductor, the company's businesses also include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.

Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com/ .

Trademarks

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. SPARC(R) and UltraSPARC(R) are registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UltraSPARC(R) is licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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Web site: http://www.ti.com/