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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Infineon is using a 65nm process as well as the GlobalFoundries 14nm Low Power Plus process to create ever-tinier SIM cards [anandtech.com]:

At MWC this year, Infineon showcased a lineup of its current and embedded SIM products. The company demonstrates not only the industry-standard MFF2 eSIM chip, but also considerably smaller ICs designed for future miniature devices (many of which may not even exist yet as a category) as well as M2M (machine to machine) applications. It is noteworthy that to manufacture an eSIM the size of a match head, Infineon uses GlobalFoundries 14LPP process technology, taking advantage of leading-edge lithography to bring the size of a simple device down.

[...] The first one, when packaged, has dimensions of 2.5×2.7×0.5 mm, which essentially means that it has no packaging at all. This IC is produced using a mature 65 nm process technology and that means that it is very cheap. The second eSIM implementation that Infineon demonstrates is actually even tinier: its dimensions when fully packaged and ready to use are just 1.5×1.1×0.37 mm. The IC is made using 14LPP process technology by GlobalFoundries and the foundry charges the chip developer accordingly. Using a leading-edge process technology to make eSIM cards is not something common, but the approach enables developers of various devices to take advantage of the smallest cards possible (another advantage of such cards are low voltages and power consumption).

The current JEDEC eSIM form factor [wikipedia.org] has an area of 5×6 mm (30 mm², over 18 times the area of Infineon's smaller version) and less than 1 mm thickness (0.85 mm in Infineon's comparison).

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