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
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
While there is a lot of excitement around the semiconductor shortage narrative and the fabs all being full, both 200mm and 300mm, there is one big plot hole and that is the FinFET era.
Intel ushered in the FinFET era only to lose FinFET dominance to the foundries shortly thereafter. In 2009 Intel brought out a 22nm FinFET wafer at the… Read More
The annual Siemens Digital Industries Software user group event was held virtually on May 26th, which made it easy to attend from my home office, although selecting from the list of speakers was a challenge, because they offered 475 sessions, wow. My focus is EDA, so I listened to Joseph Sawicki, the Executive Vice President, IC … Read More
IBM has announced the development of a 2nm process.
IBM Announcement
What was announced:
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in February 2021, Regina Freed of Applied Materials gave a paper: “Module-Level Material Engineering for Continued DRAM Scaling”. Applied Materials provided me with the presentation and was kind enough to set up an interview for me with Regina Freed.
I also spoke to Regina Freed last… Read More
There are a lot of articles out right now discussing a possible IPO for Kioxia or sale of the company with Western Digital (WD) and Micron Technology (MT) mentioned as possible acquirers. Kioxia and WD have a partnership for Flash Memory and on March 18th WD gave a presentation on the state of their partnership and what they see as their… Read More
In January I presented at the ISS conference a comparison of Intel’s, Samsung’s and TSMC’s leading edge offerings. You can read a write-up of my presentation here.
With the problems going on at Intel, that article generated a lot of interest in the investment community, and I have been holding a lot of calls with analysts who are trying… Read More
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference held in February, ASML presented the latest information on their Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) exposure systems. I recently got to interview Mike Lercel of ASML to discuss the presentations.
DUV
Despite all the attention EUV is getting, most layers are still… Read More
Semiconductor sales in 2020 were $439.0 billion, up 6.5% from $412.3 billion in 2019, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS).
We at Semiconductor Intelligence have been tracking the accuracy of semiconductor market forecasts from various sources for several years. We look at publicly available projections… Read More
