This was my 35th DAC and it did not disappoint, especially when it came to the DAC Drama Department. This year DAC proved once again that it is THE place for semiconductor professionals and academics to learn and network. The big news is that Synopsys did not reserve a booth for 56DAC in Las Vegas next year which resulted in quite a bit… Read More
At the imec technology forum held at SEMICON West, Martin Van Den Brink, President and CTO of ASML presented on the latest developments on EUV. I also had an opportunity to sit down with Mike Lercel, ASML Director of Strategic Marketing for an interview.… Read More
Next week is SEMICON West where more than 26,000 of my compatriots will meet to discuss the future of the all-important semiconductor industry. How important is the semiconductor industry you ask? Well, your life literally depends on it, absolutely. Scott Jones and I will be covering the event live for SemiWiki so stay tuned. If… Read More
The second day of SEMICON West opened with a press conference. Since it was at 7.30 in the morning we all needed the coffee that they provided. For those of us that remember the glory days of DAC some of the statistics were depressing:
The first day of SEMICON West for me is usually imec day. They have a full day of presentations. But I saw the most interesting ones in Brussels recently so I decided to go to the SEMI/Gartner day instead. They run in parallel ballrooms in the Marriot on 4th street.
To me there were two big themes. One was the unavoidable internet of things… Read More
Somebody said to me recently that SEMICON West, which takes place in San Francisco July 14-16th, isn’t that big a deal since very little manufacturing goes on in the US any more. In fact 15% of manufacturing capacity is in north america (I think that actually means the US since I don’t think there are any fabs in Canada).… Read More
SEMICON West is coming up July 14-16th. As always it is in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. Why should you go? Because SEMICON West attracts more than 30,000 professional attendees representing the leading global technology companies, including IDMs, foundries, fabless, contract packaging and test houses, OEMs, materials… Read More
So what comes after FinFETs? At 14/16nm (or 22nm if you are Intel) we had FinFET transistors, where the channel was no longer planar but stuck out of the wafer vertically, and the gate wrapped around it on 3 sides. The key thing that made FinFET transistors attractive was that the channel was thin so that the gate controlled it well. … Read More
Shakespeare reckoned that a man went through seven stages in his life.All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
Well, an EUV mask seems to only go through three main stages:
[LIST=1]
All the details of how we will build semiconductors going forward depend on whether we have EUV in our arsenal or not. Imec is very close to this since they work closely with ASML (who are about an hour and half’s drive away just outside Eindhoven in the Netherlands). At the imec technology symposium we were given a quick summary… Read More
