If you’ve been following the field of 3D integration for any time at all, then you’re familiar with Sitaram Arkalgud. In addition to being a great guy, he led the charge on 3D integration at SEMATECH in the early days. He’s now at Invensas and I’m very much looking forward to hearing from him again, this Thursday at 1:00 Eastern. You can hear from him too, by tuning into our…
Pete’s Posts
Qualcomm’s Dr. Roawen Chen to keynote at The ConFab
I’m delighted to report that Dr. Roawen Chen, Senior Vice Present of global operations at Qualcomm, has accepted our invitation to deliver the keynote talk at The ConFab, on Monday June 23rd. As previously announced, Dr. Gary Patton, Vice President of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, New York, will deliver the keynote on the second day, on Tuesday June 24th. I’m thrilled to have these two…
Dr. Gary Patton to provide keynote at The ConFab
I’m very pleased to announce that IBM’s Dr. Gary Patton will provide the keynote talk at The ConFab on Tuesday, June 24th. Gary is Vice President of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, New York. He has responsibility for IBM’s semiconductor R&D roadmap, operations, and technology development alliances, with primary locations in East Fishkill, New York, Burlington, Vermont, and the Albany Nanotech Research Center in Albany, New…
Mission accomplished. Now what?
In the late ‘80s and ‘90s, when our magazine staff gathered for dinner we often made a toast: “Here’s to chip silicon!” I really believed (and still do) that making electronics more affordable would increase their use and make our lives better and the world a better place to be. I haven’t toasted to cheap silicon for a while. Why? Because that mission has been accomplished. At SEMI’s ISS, Paul…
Take the NCMS survey, but first figure out your nano position
I recommend taking the new survey out by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) – www.usnanosurvey.org — but you may first want to give some thought as to what is and what isn’t “nanotechnology.” That’s been something of a puzzle for the semiconductor and related industries over the last 10+ years. Some put semiconductor manufacturing, where matter is regularly manipulated on an atomic scale, squarely in the nanotechnology camp.…
No technical barriers seen for 450mm
Paul Farrar, general manager of the G450C consortium, said early work has demonstrated good results and that he sees no real barriers to implementing 450mm wafers from a technical standpoint. Speaking at the SEMI ISS meeting in January, Farrar showed impressive results from, etch, CVD, PVD, CMP, furnaces, electroplating, wet cleans and lithography processes and said the inspection/metrology tools were in place to measure results. “I don’t believe we will…
50 years ago: February 1964
In February of 1964, The Beatles landed for the first time at JFK in New Work and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9th. Their song “I want to hold your hand” – their 1st #1 hit – was still #1 after 7 weeks. France & Great-Britain signed an accord over building the channel tunnel (construction for the “chunnel” began in 1988; it opened in 1992). The GI…
High cost per wafer, long design cycles may delay 20nm and beyond
Handel Jones, founder and CEO of International Business Strategies (IBS), spoke at SEMI’s Industry Strategy Symposium last week, focusing on key trends, factors impacting the growth of the industry and the migration to smaller feature dimensions. He is bullish about 2014 and industry innovation, but cautious about how quickly the industry will move to new technology nodes due to higher costs, and long design cycles. Overall, he said he believed…
The magic behind the gadget and the need for innovation
Rick Wallace, president and CEO of KLA-Tencor, provided the keynote talk at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) this year, held Jan 12-15 in Half Moon Bay, CA. He said he believes the semiconductor industry might be facing a “Concorde” moment, referring to the demise of supersonic passenger transport, the last flight of which was on 24 October 2003. “That failed not because of technology but because of economics,” Wallace…
50 years ago: January 1964
The origin of Solid State Technology began in 1958, the same year that Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit (the invention of the transistor is credited to Bell Labs; the first transistor was demonstrated on December 23, 1947). The initial name of the magazine was “Semiconductor Products” and that was changed to “Semiconductor Products and Solid State Technology” by 1962. In this news series, we’ll look…
