SPIE 2017 – ASML Interview and Presentations

SPIE 2017 – ASML Interview and Presentations
by Scotten Jones on 04-19-2017 at 7:00 am

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference I sat down with Mike Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing for ASML for an update. ASML also presented several papers at the conference and I attended many of these. In this article, I will discuss my interview with Mike and summarize the ASML presentations.… Read More


SPIE 2017 ASML and Cadence EUV impact on place and route

SPIE 2017 ASML and Cadence EUV impact on place and route
by Scotten Jones on 04-13-2017 at 7:00 am

As feature sizes have shrunk, the semiconductor industry has moved from simple, single-exposure lithography solutions to increasingly complex resolution-enhancement techniques and multi-patterning. Where the design on a mask once matched the image that would be produced on the wafer, today the mask and resulting image … Read More


SPIE 2017: Irresistible Materials EUV Photoresist

SPIE 2017: Irresistible Materials EUV Photoresist
by Scotten Jones on 04-11-2017 at 7:00 am

Irresistible Materials (IM) is a spin-out of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom that has been doing research on Photoresist and Spin-On Carbon hard masks for 10 years, most recently with Nano-C on chemistry development. IM has developed a unique EUV photoresist and they are now looking for partners to help bring… Read More


14nm 16nm 10nm and 7nm – What we know now

14nm 16nm 10nm and 7nm – What we know now
by Scotten Jones on 04-07-2017 at 7:00 am

Last week Intel held a manufacturing day where they revealed a lot of information about their 10nm process for the first time and information on competitor processes continues to slowly come out as well. I thought it would be useful to summarize what we know now, especially since some of what Intel announced was different than what… Read More


Shootout at 22nm!

Shootout at 22nm!
by Scotten Jones on 04-03-2017 at 4:00 pm

For an industry that drives improvement at an exponential rate it is funny how often something old is new again. Intel went into high volume production on 22nm in 2011, and TSMC and Samsung have both had 20nm technologies in production for several years. And yet, recently we have seen renewed interest in 22nm. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has… Read More


Intel Manufacturing Day: Nodes must die, but Moore’s Law lives!

Intel Manufacturing Day: Nodes must die, but Moore’s Law lives!
by Scotten Jones on 03-29-2017 at 4:00 pm

Yesterday I attended Intel’s manufacturing day. This was the first manufacturing day Intel has held in three years and according to Intel their most in depth ever.

Nodes must die
I have written several articles comparing process technologies across the leading-edge logic producers – GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel, Samsung… Read More


SPIE 2017: EUV Readiness for High Volume Manufacturing

SPIE 2017: EUV Readiness for High Volume Manufacturing
by Scotten Jones on 03-03-2017 at 12:00 pm

The SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference is the world’s leading conference addressing photolithography. This year on the opening day of the conference, Samsung and Intel presented papers summarizing the readiness of EUV for high volume manufacturing (HVM). In this article, I will begin by summarizing the EUV plans … Read More


An Steegen ISS Talk and Interview – Patterning Options for Advanced Nodes

An Steegen ISS Talk and Interview – Patterning Options for Advanced Nodes
by Scotten Jones on 02-28-2017 at 12:00 pm

At the ISS Conference in January, An Steegen EVP of Semiconductor Technology & Systems at imec gave a talk entitled “Patterning Options for Advanced Technology Nodes”. I was present for her talk and had the opportunity to have a follow up interview with An.… Read More


Could China Take the Lead in Installed 300mm Capacity?

Could China Take the Lead in Installed 300mm Capacity?
by Scotten Jones on 02-17-2017 at 12:00 pm

China buys more than half of the semiconductors manufactured in the world and yet only produces less the 10% of their own demand. Recently there have been a lot of announcements out of China about large scale investments in semiconductor manufacturing. The Chinese government for example has announced plans to invest $161 billion… Read More


Scott Jones ISS Talk – Moore’s Law Lives!

Scott Jones ISS Talk – Moore’s Law Lives!
by Scotten Jones on 02-07-2017 at 12:00 pm

I was invited to give a talk at this year’s ISS conference, the talk seemed to be very well received and I was asked to blog about it for SemiWiki. Parts of the talk will be familiar to SemiWiki readers from some of my previous blogs but I also went into more detail around some scaling challenges. The following is a summary of what… Read More