tag: GlobalFoundries

Directed Self-Assembly Grows Up
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 1

By Mark LaPedus At last year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Christopher Bencher, a member of the technical staff at Applied Materials, said the buzz surrounding directed self-assembly (DSA) technology resembled the fervor generated at the famous Woodstock rock concert in 1969. This was clearly evident from the tumultuous and free-flowing movement that threatened the status quo o... » read more

Swimming In Data
By Ed Sperling - 21 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling So many warnings about data overload have been issued over the past decade that people generally have stopped paying attention to them. The numbers are so astronomical that increases tend to lose meaning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the semiconductor metrology world, where files are measured in gigabytes. And at each new process node, as the number of transistors a... » read more

What’s In A Name?
By Subi Kengeri - 20 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Subi Kengeri Consumers continue to demand smaller, faster and more energy-efficient electronic devices, driving the semiconductor industry to accelerate development of commercially viable chips on more advanced nodes. However, these new nodes don’t just appear by magic. It takes a great deal of careful planning to develop and deliver a process technology platform that offers competitivene... » read more

Version Control
By Ed Sperling - 14 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling & Ann Steffora Mutschler One of the biggest impediments to progress in semiconductor design is progress itself—version after version of specifications, formats and increasingly IP. In fact, there are so many different versions, some of which conflict directly with each other, that it may take months or even years before some customers adopt new products. Much has ... » read more

The Week In Review: Feb. 25
By Ed Sperling - 25 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Is China set to bail out a U.S. government technology darling? Two Chinese automotive companies, Geely and Dongfeng Motor, are reported to have bid between $200 million and $350 million for a majority stake in Fisker, the maker of plug-in hybrid cars. If that happens Fisker—which has $192 million in U.S. federal government loan guarantees—could be headed to China, according... » read more

Good Pattern Flow Ahead For 14, 10nm
By Ann Mutschler - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Given complexity, yield, power and other challenges with leading edge manufacturing, semiconductor foundries increasingly have been forced to require more and more restrictive design rules with each new process node. “They keep adding more design rules and more operations to a particular check to eliminate corner cases where in manufacturing they saw some variant... » read more

Getting Ready For High-Mobility FinFETs
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus The IC industry entered the finFET era in 2011, when Intel leapfrogged the competition and rolled out the newfangled transistor technology at the 22nm node. Intel hopes to ramp up its second-generation finFET devices at 14nm by year’s end, with plans to debut its 11nm technology by 2015. Hoping to close the gap with Intel, silicon foundries are accelerating their efforts t... » read more

Foundry Arms Race Under Way
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus A year ago, chipmakers were reeling from a severe shortage of 28nm foundry capacity, prompting foundries to ramp up their fabs at a staggering pace. At the time, foundries were unable to keep up with huge and unforeseen demand for mobile chips. The shortfall was also caused by low yields and the overall lack of installed 28nm capacity. Today, the 28nm crunch is largely ov... » read more

Optical Lithography, Take Two
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has missed the initial stages of the 10nm logic and 1xnm NAND flash nodes. Chipmakers hope to insert EUV by the latter stages of 10nm or by 7nm, but vendors are not counting on EUV in the near term and are preparing their back-up plans. Barring a breakthrough with EUV or other technology, IC ... » read more

Accelerating Moore’s Law
By Ed Sperling - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Ever since the inception of Moore’s Law, process nodes have moved forward at a rate of once every 18 to 24 months. Companies have been talking about slowing down the rate of progression as things get harder, but at least for the next couple of process nodes something very strange will occur—Moore’s Law will accelerate. The root cause is growing competition for a shrinki... » read more

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