Executive Insight: Lip-Bu Tan


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with [getperson id="11693" comment="Lip-Bu Tan"], president and CEO of [getentity id="22032" e_name ="Cadence"], to discuss his outlook on EDA, Moore’s Law and his strategy for investing in startups around the world. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What’s worrying you these days? Tan: There are a couple of things. One is the complex... » read more

Why Investments At Advanced Nodes Matter


Despite all the talk about rising costs of development, uncertainties about lithography and talk about the death of Moore’s Law, a record number of companies are developing chips at 16nm/14nm. That may sound surprising, but asking why that’s happening is probably the wrong question. The really critical question is what they’re going to do with those chips. What’s become quite evident... » read more

One-On-One: Mark Bohr


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss process technology, transistor trends, chip-packaging and other topics with Mark Bohr, a senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration at Intel. SE: Intel recently introduced chips based on its new 14nm process. Can you briefly describe the 14nm process? Bohr: It’s our second-generation, tri-gate technology. So it has al... » read more

EDA Vendors Prepare For 7nm


It’s not too early to begin looking at design tools for the 7nm, even though the node is not expected to be production-ready until later this decade. While still in the early stages, foundries already in development with leading EDA companies, even though the water remains murky at this point. “7nm right now is in early definition, so we don't know exactly what it will be,” observed... » read more

Survey: Optimism Up For Multi-beam


The eBeam Initiative announced the completion of its third annual survey. In one of the highlights of the survey, a majority (58%) of respondents predict that multi-beam technology will be used in production by 2016 to address the critical problem of mask write times as the industry moves to smaller geometries. And according to the survey, skepticism of EUV lithography also increased comp... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: Where are the most severe issues these days? Is it on the design... » read more

What Happened To Next-Gen Lithography?


Chipmakers continue to march down the process technology curve. Using today’s optical lithography and multiple patterning, the semiconductor industry is scaling its leading-edge devices far beyond what was once considered possible. The question is how far can the industry extend 193nm immersion [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] and multiple patterning before these technologies become t... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: There seems to be some debate in this group about whether we’r... » read more

DSA: Hype Or Revolution?


Directed self-assembly (DSA) has become the subject of a great deal of research attention in the lithography world, to the point where there were dedicated sessions at this year’s Advanced Lithography conference in February. So is this just another passing research fad, or is it a technology that will revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing? DSA utilizes a block copolymer that effectivel... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: We’re starting to hear talk about octuple patterning. We’ve ... » read more

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