Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead

Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead
by Scotten Jones on 04-29-2020 at 10:00 am

TSMC Process Lead Slides 20200427 Page 1

Recently Seeking Alpha published an article “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Losing Its Process Leadership To Intel” and Dan Nenni (SemiWiki founder) asked me to take a look at the article and do my own analysis. This is a subject I have followed and published on for many years.

Before I dig into specific process density… Read More


SPIE 2020 – ASML EUV and Inspection Update

SPIE 2020 – ASML EUV and Inspection Update
by Scotten Jones on 04-20-2020 at 10:00 am

0.33 NA EUV systems for HVM Ron Schuurhuis Page 02

I couldn’t attend the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference this year for personal reasons, but last week Mike Lercel of ASML was nice enough to walk me through the major ASML presentations from the conference.

Introduction
In late 2018, Samsung and TSMC introduced 7nm foundry logic processes with 5 to 7 EUV layers, throughout … Read More


IEDM 2019 – Imec Interviews

IEDM 2019 – Imec Interviews
by Scotten Jones on 01-21-2020 at 6:00 am

Slide4

Imec is one of the premier semiconductor research organizations and at IEDM they presented dozens of papers. I had the opportunity to see several of the papers presented and interview 3 of Imec’s researchers.

Jan Van Houdt, DMTS ferroelectric and exploratory memory

I have had very interesting discussions with Imec researchers… Read More


IEDM 2019 – Applied Materials panel EUV Recap

IEDM 2019 – Applied Materials panel EUV Recap
by Scotten Jones on 12-23-2019 at 10:00 am

On Tuesday night of IEDM, Applied Materials held a panel discussion “The Future of Logic: EUV is Here, Now What?”. The panelists were: Regina Freed, managing director at Applied Materials as the moderator, Geoffrey Yeap, senior director of advanced technology at TSMC, Bala Haran, director of silicon process research at IBM, … Read More


IEDM 2019 to Highlight Innovative Devices for an Era of Connected Intelligence

IEDM 2019 to Highlight Innovative Devices for an Era of Connected Intelligence
by Scotten Jones on 08-28-2019 at 6:00 am

The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting is in my opinion the leading technology conference to understand the current state-of-the-art in semiconductor process technology. Held each year in early December in San Francisco it is a must attend conference for anyone following technology development. The following is… Read More


SEMICON West 2019 – Day 1 – Imec

SEMICON West 2019 – Day 1 – Imec
by Scotten Jones on 07-15-2019 at 10:00 am

On Monday, July 8th Imec held a technology forum ahead of Semicon West. I saw the papers presented and interviewed three of the authors. The following is a summary of what I feel are the keys points of their research.

Arnaud Furnemont
Arnaud Furnemont’s talk was titled “From Technology Scaling to System Optimization”. Simple 2D … Read More


SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – Imec and Veeco on EUV

SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – Imec and Veeco on EUV
by Scotten Jones on 04-19-2019 at 12:00 pm

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference Imec presented several papers on EUV and Veeco presented about etching for EUV masks. I had the opportunity to see the presentations and speak with some of the authors. In this article I will summarize the key issues around EUV based on this research.

EUV is ramping up into high volume 7nm… Read More


SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – ASML EUV Update

SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – ASML EUV Update
by Scotten Jones on 03-23-2019 at 12:00 am

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference ASML gave an update on both the current 0.33NA system and the 0.55 high-NA system development. I saw the presentations and got to sit down with Mike Lercel (Director of Strategic Marketing).… Read More


LithoVision 2019 – Semiconductor Technology Trends and their impact on Lithography

LithoVision 2019 – Semiconductor Technology Trends and their impact on Lithography
by Scotten Jones on 03-01-2019 at 12:00 pm

I was asked to present at Nikon’s LithoVision event again this year. LithoVision is held the day before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference also in San Jose. The following is a write up of my talk.… Read More


SEMICON West – Leading Edge Lithography and EUV

SEMICON West – Leading Edge Lithography and EUV
by Scotten Jones on 08-13-2018 at 7:00 am

At SEMICON West I attended the imec technology forum, multiple Tech Spot presentations and conducted a number of interviews relevant to advanced lithography and EUV. In this article I will summarize what I learned plus make some comments on the outlook for EUV.… Read More