Taiwan: Aggressive Investments In Equipment For 2013-2014


By Christian Gregor Dieseldorff Semiconductor equipment spending in 2012 declined significantly in the second half of the year as sluggish conditions in the global economy dampened some investments in the industry. Counter to this trend was spending in the Taiwan, which could come in at the $9.3 billion to $9.5 billion range. This represents $800 million more in equipment for Taiwan compared t... » read more

Supersizing Wafers


By Katherine Derbyshire Get ready for 450mm wafers. First seriously considered in 2005, these supersized wafers, along with the equipment to handle, measure, and process them, have gradually made their way to the top of the semiconductor industry’s priority list. But what exactly does that mean? What will 450mm fabs look like, and how will they differ from the 300-mm fabs being built toda... » read more

Experts At The Table: IC Manufacturing Challenges


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future manufacturing challenges with Carlos Mazure, chief technical officer at Soitec; Jeff Hebb, vice president of laser product marketing at Ultratech; Markus Wimplinger, corporate technology development and IP director at EV Group; and Girish Dixit, vice president of the customer integration center and process inte... » read more

Experts At The Table: IC Manufacturing Challenges


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future manufacturing challenges with Carlos Mazure, chief technical officer at Soitec; Jeff Hebb, vice president of laser product marketing at Ultratech; Markus Wimplinger, corporate technology development and IP director at EV Group; and Girish Dixit, vice president of the customer integration center and process inte... » read more

Why the Big Players Like 450mm Wafers


The reason semiconductor manufacturers like the idea of 450-mm wafers is easy to understand:  bigger wafers should lower the per-chip cost of manufacturing.  But as I mentioned in my last post, this per-chip cost advantage doesn’t apply to lithography.  Each time a wafer size is increased, only the non-litho (per-chip) costs go down, and so lithography costs take up a bigger portion of the... » read more

G450C To Align Vendors During 450mm Transition


By David Lammers Innovation and synchronization among multiple companies do not often go hand in hand. But for the 450mm wafer transition to provide its full benefits, chip makers and their suppliers will need to do more than a simple wafer size scale up. That may lead the Global 450 Consortium (G450C) to serve as the proving ground for efforts to more closely match the electrical results o... » read more

Why 450mm wafers?


Why is 450-mm development so important to Intel (and Samsung and TSMC)? A few years ago, Intel and TSMC began heavily promoting the need for a transition from the current standard silicon wafer size, 300 mm, to the new 450-mm wafers.  While many have worked on 450-mm standards and technology for years, it is only recently that the larger wafer has received enough attention and support (not ... » read more

All Indicators Point North


Designing and producing chips has always been difficult, but the number of things that conspire to make it harder at 20nm is the longest in the history of the semiconductor industry. The list will grow longer still at 14nm and beyond, not to mention so expensive that one mistake will kill a company. While system engineers and architects look at the challenges on the front end, the problems ... » read more

Bigger Shifts Ahead


At 130nm the manufacturing portion of the semiconductor industry struggled with copper interconnects, 300mm wafers and immersion lithography. At 20nm and 14nm it will have to grapple with double, triple and possibly even quadruple patterning, new gate structures, the usual increases in process variation, far more expensive designs, complex challenges in attaining reasonable yields and in connec... » read more

450mm and EUV Linked With Uncertainty


By Jonathan Davis The transition to manufacturing semiconductors on larger wafers continues to be one of the hottest topics in the industry. Some chipmakers have committed to advancing the transition. Intel announced that its D1X fab in Oregon will be 450mm compatible (2013). TSMC announced a 450mm pilot line by 2013-2014. IMEC and ISMI have well-established programs focused on the challeng... » read more

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