Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, said Intel is standing firm on 450mm development (despite rumors to the contrary), during a quarterly conference call with financial analysts. He also blamed defects on a slight push-out of next-generation 14nm technology. When asked about 450mm plans, Krzanich said: “We have not changed our timing. We are still targeting the second, latter half of this decade. We continue to see great value…
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Progress on 450mm at G450C
At Semicon Europa last week, Paul Farrar, general manager of G450C, provided an update on the consortium’s progress in demonstrating 450mm process capability. He said 25 tools will be installed in the Albany cleanroom by the end of 2013, progress has been made on notchless wafers with a 1.5mm edge exclusion zone, they have seen significant progress in wafer quality, and automation and wafer carriers are working. G450C is an…
Status update on logic and memory roadmaps
The way in which logic and memory technology is likely to evolve over the next six years was provided at imec’s recent International Technology Forum in Leuven, Belgium. An Steegan, senior vice president process technology at imec, said that FinFETs will likely become the logic technology of choice for the upcoming generations, with high mobility channels coming into play for the 7 and 5nm generation (2017 and 2019). In DRAM,…
Semiconductors that detect cancer
At the recent imec International Technology Forum Press Gathering in Leuven, Belgium, imec CEO Luc Van den hove provided an update on blood cell sorting technology that combines semiconductor technology with microfluidics, imaging and high speed data processing to detect tumorous cancer cells. As I reported previously, the challenge is huge: one has to have the ability to detect one bad tumor cell in 5 billion blood cells. This equate…
Europe’s 10/100/20 program
Despite some economic woes in recent years, Europe remains dedicated to building a strong electronics industry. This was brought home to me recently when, in advance of Semicon Europa (October 7-10 in Dresden), I had a chance to talk with Heinz Kundert, president of SEMI Europe. “There are several initiatives like the KET (key enabling technology) initiative that are working on the same goals to increase the competitiveness but also…
Apple A7 uses Samsung’s 28nm process
Last week, we started tearing down the Apple iPhone 5S. There has been much speculation that Apple would be moving their processor chips over to TSMC, but I think that we can now decisively say that this has not occurred – they have migrated to 28nm, but still at Samsung. Earlier in the day last Friday we established from the look of the die that the A7 was manufactured by…
Apple A7 uses Samsung’s 28nm process
Last week, we started tearing down the Apple iPhone 5S. There has been much speculation that Apple would be moving their processor chips over to TSMC, but I think that we can now decisively say that this has not occurred – they have migrated to 28nm, but still at Samsung. Earlier in the day last Friday we established from the look of the die that the A7 was manufactured by…
Apple A7 uses Samsung’s 28nm process
Last week, we started tearing down the Apple iPhone 5S. There has been much speculation that Apple would be moving their processor chips over to TSMC, but I think that we can now decisively say that this has not occurred – they have migrated to 28nm, but still at Samsung. Earlier in the day last Friday we established from the look of the die that the A7 was manufactured by…
Join us for a free webcast on Advanced Packaging, Sept. 30th
Please join us for a free webcast on Advanced Packaging, to be held on September 30th, at 11:00am Eastern, 10:00am Central and 8:00am Pacific. You can register in advance at this link: https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1021830 The webcast, which will feature presenters from Texas Instruments and Micron, will address how today’s packaging technology is driven by a combination of cost, performance, form factor and reliability. The presenters will examine new advances in conventional…
Defect-free mask blanks next EUV challenge
The next major roadblock to progress in the ongoing push to develop EUV lithography for volume production is the availability of defect-free mask blanks. According to Veeco’s Tim Pratt, Senior Director, Marketing, the tools in place today are not capable of producing mask blanks with the kind of yield necessary to support a ramp in EUV. “Based on the yield today, the mask blank manufacturing capacity can’t produce enough mask…
