Wanted: New Metrology Funding Models


By Mark LaPedus The shift toward the 20nm node and beyond will require new and major breakthroughs in chip manufacturing. Most of the attention centers around lithography, gate stacks, interconnects, strain engineering and design-for-manufacturing (DFM). Lost in the conversation are two other critical but overlooked pieces in the manufacturing puzzle—wafer inspection and metrology. ... » read more

Swimming In Data


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

New Math


It was nice when we had round numbers to work with. It was pretty simple to move from 180nm to 120nm and then to 90nm. Then the half nodes started—45/40, 32/28 and 22/20nm. After 14nm we are poised dangerously over the single-digit process nodes. Intel is working on 10nm, to be followed by 7nm or 5nm. Other companies are looking at 11nm, to be followed by 8nm, 6nm or something even further... » read more

Newer posts →