Tennant’s Law

By Chris Mack - 05 Jan, 2012 - Comments: 1

It’s hard to make things small. It’s even harder to make things small cheaply. I was recently re-reading Tim Brunner’s wonderful paper from 2003, “Why optical lithography will live forever” [1] when I was reminded of Tennant’s Law [2,3]. Don Tennant spent 27 years working in lithography-related fields at Bell Labs, and has been running the Cornell NanoScale Science and Techno... » read more

A view from the top (20)

By Chris Mack - 08 Nov, 2011 - Comments: 0

It is an article of faith among semiconductor industry watchers that the last 20 years have seen considerable consolidation among semiconductor makers, with further consolidation all but inevitable. Of course, we can all point to mergers (TI and National being the latest) and players exiting from the market (NEC was the #1 chipmaker in the world in 1991, but now is out of the business). But d... » read more

The top 20 ain’t what it used to be

By Chris Mack - 27 Oct, 2011 - Comments: 0

Looking back on data of the annual top 20 semiconductor companies since 1987, it’s amazing how much has changed. In my last post I looked at all the companies that went bankrupt, spun-out, or merged their way into or out of the top 20 list. Change is definitely a constant in this field. Now, let’s look at the makeup of the 2010 list of top semiconductor companies. Here is the list, as g... » read more

It’s hard to stay on top

By Chris Mack - 13 Oct, 2011 - Comments: 0

As part of my fascination with the history of the semiconductor industry, I’ve recently been reviewing data on the annual top 20 semiconductor companies since 1987. Using revenue data compiled by Gartner Dataquest (through 1999) and iSupply (2000 – 2010), it’s been very interesting to see what changes have come about at the top of the heap in our industry. Here is a brief synopsis of so... » read more

Is EUV the SST of Lithography?

By Chris Mack - 26 Jul, 2011 - Comments: 0

Analogies with Moore’s Law abound. Virtually any trend looks linear on a log-linear plot if the time period is short enough. Some people hopefully compare their industry’s recent history to Moore’s Law, wishfully predicting future success with the air of inevitability that is usually attached to Moore’s Law. Others look to some past trend in the hopes of understanding the future of M... » read more

Litho in Las Vegas 2

By Chris Mack - 04 Jun, 2011 - Comments: 0

The 3-beam conference began on Wednesday morning with the plenary session. Nick Economou discussed the history and current performance of the Helium Ion Microscope. What an amazing tool! It has much higher resolution than a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with far less charging. The result is truly amazing pictures of biological and other non-conducting samples. I can’t wait to s... » read more

Litho in Las Vegas

By Chris Mack - 01 Jun, 2011 - Comments: 0

Las Vegas is not my favorite city. It is America’s monument to greed (and bad taste), where form not only wins over substance, it’s as if substance never even showed up for the race. This place relishes in its lack of roots, tearing down old facades to build newer, bigger facades (little is more pathetic than faded glitz) in an arms race of extravagance. It is all so purposely disorienti... » read more

Still Room at the Bottom

By Chris Mack - 13 Apr, 2011 - Comments: 0

Fifty years ago today, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave Earth and enter space. (He was perfectly qualified for the job: he was short, and was willing to sit there and do nothing as he was hurled like a cannon ball into space.) If sputnik awoke the world to the technical possibilities of space, Gagarin awoke our sense of awe and adventure for space. I grew up in the... » read more

SPIE – Day 4

By Chris Mack - 06 Mar, 2011 - Comments: 0

This week in San Jose began cold, but warmed up by Thursday to the kind of weather we all expect from California. So too with the conference, and I think Thursday had some of the most interesting, and surprising, presentations. The day began for me with the much-anticipated presentation by ASML on the NXE:3100 extreme ultraviolet (EUV) “pre-production” lithography scanner. As expected,... » read more

SPIE – Day 3

By Chris Mack - 04 Mar, 2011 - Comments: 0

Today I talked more than listened. I had two papers, both on stochastic effects in lithography. In one, I showed a complete model for EUV resist exposure and for predicting stochastic uncertainty in the acid concentration at the end of exposure. The second, looking at quenching effects, is unfortunately a work in progress. There is still much to learn. One important lesson is to get my pap... » read more

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