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A great article from Ian Cuttress -- partial take-aways to not spoil the full article:
- "When it comes to IBM, I firmly believe they’re in the camp of saying Moore’s Law is still alive."
- There are multiple types of CFET design in the literature, and specifically IBM has built a staggered sequential CFET design
- [Compared to IBM's 2nm - 40% SRAM scaling, 50% Logic scaling, more info in article]
- IBM is getting a High-NA machine..
The article also contrasts the major chip foundries approaches to future transistor types with what IBM is doing/planning, using plenty of charts and diagrams.
The really interesting bit is not just the PMOS/NMOS staggering but the fact that the NMOS and PMOS are on separately processed wafers which are cut on different crystal planes (<110> for PMOS, <001> for NMOS) to optimise the performance of each.
The key to all this is the new (proprietary?) "device-scale" wafer bonding process which IBM claim to have got working -- how this transfers to mass production remains to be seen, presumably any foundry which wanted to adopt the process will have to license this, and the differently-cut wafers, and the staggering.
All put together this offers some pretty compelling advantages, so it'll be interesting to see what the foundries (especially TSMC) do, adopt/license the IBM approach or try and come up with something of their own with similar advantages...
This is interesting research. I congratulate my friends at IBM for research and their leadership
But IBM does not manufacture semiconductors for itself or anyone else. Correct?
IBM 2nm was "announced" over 5 years ago and it is still 2+ years from anyone (Rapidus) using it in a real product that people buy.
So its an idea for conference attendees to discuss (Like university papers). It would seem it is unlikely to ever impact what actually happens in the industry
great comprehenive article by Ian...... I wish my brain could create, hold, and summarize that much information. Well done.
This is interesting research. I congratulate my friends at IBM for research and their leadership
But IBM does not manufacture semiconductors for itself or anyone else. Correct?
IBM 2nm was "announced" over 5 years ago and it is still 2+ years from anyone (Rapidus) using it in a real product that people buy.
So its an idea for conference attendees to discuss (Like university papers). It would seem it is unlikely to ever impact what actually happens in the industry
great comprehenive article by Ian...... I wish my brain could create, hold, and summarize that much information. Well done.
Surely the point about IBM is that they're great at coming up with radical new technologies, but not necessarily ones that can easily be turned into a real high-yield cost-competitive mass-production process (directly or via licensing)?
This has happened in the the past with foundries who tried to do this and came unstuck (e.g. Samsung? STM?), maybe because IBM don't think hard enough about production/alignment margins -- so long as they get one working lot and can publish a paper about it (and license it?) that's their job done.
Still doesn't mean they didn't do it first (and deserve credit for that), or that it won't end up being widely adopted -- but often the foundry that succeeds is one that builds on the fundamental IBM idea but then does it better for mass production (e.g. TSMC...)
There are several major new ideas here which together give a pretty big PPA advantage, the question is whether they'll make it to MP (and when) and in which foundry.
morethanmoore.substack.com
