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Intel 2022 Investor Meeting

Intel 2022 Investor Meeting
by Scotten Jones on 02-21-2022 at 6:00 am

Figure 1 Process Innovations

Last Thursday Intel held their investors meeting, in this write up I wanted to focus on my areas of coverage/expertise, process technology and manufacturing.

Technology Development presented by Ann Kelleher

Last year Intel presented their Intel Accelerated plan and, in this meeting, we got a review of where Intel stands on that… Read More


Samsung Keynote at IEDM

Samsung Keynote at IEDM
by Scotten Jones on 01-27-2022 at 6:00 am

Samsung Keynote Figure 1

Kinam Kim is a longtime Samsung technologist who has published many excellent articles over the years. He is now the Chairman of Samsung Electronics, and he gave a very interesting keynote address at IEDM.

He began with some general observations:

The world is experiencing a transformation powered by semiconductors that has been… Read More


Intel Discusses Scaling Innovations at IEDM

Intel Discusses Scaling Innovations at IEDM
by Scotten Jones on 12-14-2021 at 6:00 am

Intel at IEDM Slides Page 1

Standard Cell Scaling

Complex logic designs are built up from standard cells, in order to continue to scale logic we need to continually shrink the size of standard cells.

Figure 1 illustrates the dimensions of a standard cell.

 Figure 1. Standard Cell Dimensions.

 From figure 1 we can see that shrinking standard cell sizes requires… Read More


SISPAD – Cost Simulations to Enable PPAC Aware Technology Development

SISPAD – Cost Simulations to Enable PPAC Aware Technology Development
by Scotten Jones on 10-31-2021 at 10:00 am

Slide11

I was invited to give a plenary address at the SISPAD conference in September 2021. For anyone not familiar with SISPAD it is a premiere TCAD conference. This year for the first time SISPAD wanted to address cost and my talk was “Cost Simulations to Enable PPAC Aware Technology Development”.

For many years the standard in technology… Read More


TSMC Arizona Fab Cost Revisited

TSMC Arizona Fab Cost Revisited
by Scotten Jones on 10-13-2021 at 8:00 am

TSMC North America Fabs

Back in May of 2020 I published some comparisons of the cost to run a TSMC fab in Arizona versus their fabs in Taiwan. I found the fab operating cost based on the country-to-country difference to only be 3.4% higher in the US and then I found an additional 3.8% because of the smaller fab scale. Since that time, I have continued to encounter… Read More


Intel Accelerated

Intel Accelerated
by Scotten Jones on 07-27-2021 at 6:00 am

Intel Process Name Decoder

Intel presented yesterday on their plans for process technology and packaging over the next several years. This was the most detailed roadmap Intel has ever laid out. In this write up I will analyze Intel’s process announcement and how they match up with their competitors.

10nm Super Fin (SF)

10nm is now in volume production in three… Read More


VLSI Technology Symposium – Imec Alternate 3D NAND Word Line Materials

VLSI Technology Symposium – Imec Alternate 3D NAND Word Line Materials
by Scotten Jones on 07-19-2021 at 6:00 am

T8 1 Arjun Page 08

At the 2021 VLSI Technology Symposium, Imec presented on Ruthenium (Ru) and Molybdenum (Mo) as alternate Word Line (WL) materials for 3D NAND Flash “First Demonstration of Ruthenium and Molybdenum Word lines Integrated into 40nm Pitch 3D NAND Memory Devices”. I had an opportunity to interview one of the authors: Maarten Rosmeulen.… Read More


VLSI Technology Symposium – Imec Forksheet

VLSI Technology Symposium – Imec Forksheet
by Scotten Jones on 07-06-2021 at 6:00 am

VLSI2021 T2 1 Mertens v2 Page 05

FinFETs devices are reaching their limits for scaling. Horizontal Nanosheets (HNS) are a type of Gate All Around (GAA) device that offers better scaling and performance per unit area. HNS is the logical next step from FinFETs because HNS processing is similar to FinFETs with a limited number of process changes required.

At the … Read More


VLSI Symposium – TSMC and Imec on Advanced Process and Devices Technology Toward 2nm

VLSI Symposium – TSMC and Imec on Advanced Process and Devices Technology Toward 2nm
by Scotten Jones on 07-02-2021 at 6:00 am

Figure 1

At the 2021 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in June a short course was held on “Advanced Process and Devices Technology Toward 2nm-CMOS and Emerging Memory”. In this article I will review the first two presentations covering leading edge logic devices. The two presentations are complementary and provide and excellent… Read More


Is IBM’s 2nm Announcement Actually a 2nm Node?

Is IBM’s 2nm Announcement Actually a 2nm Node?
by Scotten Jones on 05-09-2021 at 6:00 am

Slide1

IBM has announced the development of a 2nm process.

IBM Announcement

What was announced:

  • “2nm”
  • 50 billion transistors in a “thumbnail” sized area later disclosed to be 150mm2 = 333 million transistors per millimeter (MTx/mm2).
  • 44nm Contacted Poly Pitch (CPP) with 12nm gate length.
  • Gate All Around (GAA), there are several ways
Read More