SEMICON West – EUV Readiness Update

SEMICON West – EUV Readiness Update
by Scotten Jones on 08-11-2017 at 12:00 pm

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


Semiconductor is Definitely NOT Business as Usual!

Semiconductor is Definitely NOT Business as Usual!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-05-2016 at 12:00 pm

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


SEMICON Day 2: Outlook and Keynote Panel

SEMICON Day 2: Outlook and Keynote Panel
by Paul McLellan on 07-15-2015 at 7:00 am

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:

  • 45th year (hey, we got them beat on at least one statistic)
  • 692 exhibitors
  • 136 new exhibitors (about
Read More

SEMICON Day 1: IoT Everywhere…and China

SEMICON Day 1: IoT Everywhere…and China
by Paul McLellan on 07-14-2015 at 5:00 pm

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


Semiconductor Equipment: the Report and the Show

Semiconductor Equipment: the Report and the Show
by Paul McLellan on 06-18-2015 at 7:00 am

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, Free For Two More Days

SEMICON West, Free For Two More Days
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2015 at 7:00 am

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


What Comes After FinFET?

What Comes After FinFET?
by Paul McLellan on 08-10-2014 at 11:01 pm

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


EUV Pellicles

EUV Pellicles
by Paul McLellan on 07-31-2014 at 8:01 am

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]

  • the blank
  • Read More

    EUV and DSA from Imec and #semiconwest

    EUV and DSA from Imec and #semiconwest
    by Paul McLellan on 07-14-2014 at 7:00 am

    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


    Imec’s Process Secret Decoder Ring

    Imec’s Process Secret Decoder Ring
    by Paul McLellan on 07-12-2014 at 11:00 am

    To wrap up Semicon West, let’s go back to Monday and the imec presentations. In fact, An Steegen’s presentation titled The Semiconductor Roadmap. She covered a lot of ground, but some of her slides contain a wealth of information. Let’s look at the options for 10nm, 7nm and a little 5nm, what imec call N10, N7 and… Read More