Increasing fab costs coming for inspection and metrology At SEMICON West this year in Thursday morning’s Yield Breakfast sponsored by Entegris, top executives from Qualcomm, GlobalFoundries, and Applied Materials discussed the challenges to achieving profitable fab yield for atomic-scale devices…
Moore’s Law is Dead – (Part 4) Why?
We forgot Moore merely meant that IC performance would always improve (Part 4 of 4) IC marketing must convince customers to design ICs into electronic products. In 1965, when Gordon Moore first told the world that IC component counts would…
TSMC 20nm Arrives – The First Shoe Drops
For us at Chipworks interested in leading edge processes, 2014 so far has been the year of waiting for parts and processes that have been announced, but not shown up in the world of commercial production.
TSMC 20nm Arrives – The First Shoe Drops
For us at Chipworks interested in leading edge processes, 2014 so far has been the year of waiting for parts and processes that have been announced, but not shown up in the world of commercial production.
Moore’s Law is Dead – (Part 3) Where?
…we reach the atomic limits of device scaling. At ~4nm pitch we run out of room “at the bottom,” after patterning costs explode at 45nm pitch. Lead bongo player of physics Richard Feynman famously said, “There’s plenty of room at…
Can we take cost out of technology scaling?
At The ConFab, IBM’s Gary Patton spoke about the future of scaling and concluded that it we will continue scaling with new technology innovation, but we have to figure out how to drive the cost out.
Moore’s Law is Dead – (Part 2) When?
…economics of lithography slow scaling. Moore’s Law had been on life support ever since the industry started needing Double-Patterning (DP) at 1/4-pitch of 193nm optical lithography. EUV lithography shows slow and steady progress in source and resist technologies, and ASML…
Moore’s Law is Dead – (Part 1) What?
…twice the number of components won’t appear on the next IC chip (Part 1 of 4) Gordon Moore always calls it “so-called Moore’s Law” when discussing his eponymous observation about IC scaling trends, and he has always acknowledged that it’s…
Three fundamental shifts
At The ConFab, IBM’s Gary Patton gave us three reasons to be very positive about the future of the semiconductor industry: an explosion of applications, the rise of big data and the need to analyze all that data.
The Rise of MEMS Sensors
Join us for a MEMS-focused webcast on Thursday, June 19th at 12:00pm Eastern time. Presenters will be Jay Esfandyari from STMicroelectronics and Simone Severi from imec.
