5 Reasons Euv Will Or Won’t Be Used
posted on March 24, 2015 14:04
Digging into this subject, there are five metrics that count in a lithography tool: resolution, throughput, defects, overlay, and reliability. So what does the best data tell us about the current state and realistic prognosis for EUV.
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In 2020, 10nm Will Occupy 55% of Revenue: TSMC
posted on March 24, 2015 14:03
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Mark Liu, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-President at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) gave a speech under the topic “Growth Beyond Mobile” on March 18, referring to Internet of Things (IoT) will be the main growth driver of semiconductor industry, he further forecast that the 10nm will occupy 55 percent of revenue in 2020.
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3D Effects At 20Nm And Beyond
posted on March 24, 2015 14:02
At the 20nm process node and below, attenuated phase shift masks (PSM) are used in the photolithography process, which results in approximately 70nm of topography. This now must be accounted for using 3D mask approximation.
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Moore’s Curse
posted on March 24, 2015 14:01
In 1965, the year in which the number of components on a microchip had doubled, Gordon Moore predicted [pdf] that “certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue.” In 1975 he revised [pdf] the doubling rate to two years; later, it settled down at about 18 months, or an exponential growth rate of 46 percent a year. This is Moore’s Law.
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FinFETs Race Toward Silicon
posted on March 16, 2015 12:05
SAN JOSE, Calif. — More than 100 chips in or headed for production have taped out using FinFET-based process technologies, according to EDA tool vendor Synopsys Inc. The chips include a quad ARM Cortex-A72 device made in TSMC’s 16nm process, it said.
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Heat Propagates as a Wave in Graphene
posted on March 16, 2015 12:04
Thermal management is one of the biggest issues facing electronics today. While cooling fans and other system-level solutions have been the mainstay of schemes aimed at controlling heat, higher circuit densities and faster clock speeds are making chips run so hot that new solutions are needed.
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Apple’s Watch is the Next Big Geek Icebreaker
posted on March 16, 2015 12:03
Remember when you first saw an iPhone? Unless you’re an Apple fanboy, it was probably not at an Apple store, but instead was during a business or social event. Someone pulled an iPhone out of his pocket to “check a message,” and quickly drew a crowd as he demonstrated a few fun features. And then we all tried swiping through his family photos—swipe was new then, and it was pretty amazing. And, for a while anyway, the guy with the iPhone was the most popular person in the room.
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Strong Fab Equipment Spending Expected in 2015; Slowing but Positive 2016
posted on March 16, 2015 12:02
SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 10, 2015 — SEMI today announced an update of the SEMI World Fab Forecast report which updates outlooks for 2015 and 2016. The SEMI (www.semi.org) report reveals that fab equipment spending in 2014 increased almost 20 percent and will rise 15 percent in 2015, increasing only 2-4 percent in 2016. Since November 2014, SEMI has made 270 updates on its World Fab Forecast report, which tracks fab spending for construction and equipment, as well as capacity changes, and technology nodes transitions and product type changes by fab.
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Thermal Is Still Simmering
posted on March 16, 2015 12:01
With the ever increasing sophistication in today’s high-performance SoCs on top of sheer physics of device manufacturing, thermal is a much bigger concern than ever before.
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Intel Calls for 3D IC
posted on March 09, 2015 13:05
At the recent ISSCC Intel presented the following slide. Quoting from Extremetech coverage: "At 10nm and below, the path forward will become increasingly murky. What Intel has proposed is essentially a shift towards other types of cost-saving technologies and process adoptions rather than relying on strict lithography improvement.
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