""Ron is accessible, fast and accurate. He knows to ask the right questions and does a thorough, 
top-notch job. I would not hesitate to use Ron's services again."

Below are some slides from recent Common Platform Technology Forum, the chip alliance of IBM, Globalfoundries and Samsung about the future direction of process integration. The Common Technology Platform and other vendors has been lagging Intel in process development and integration for several years. Their latest effort to catch up are:

"IBM sketched out its visions of the fab future at the recent Common Platform Technology Forum, the chip alliance of IBM, Globalfoundries and Samsung. IBM scientists spotlights that double patterning tricks with immersion lithography. Big Blue also showed advances in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator and plans for silicon photonics, nanowires"

 

" IBM, GloFo and Samsung now claim they have the lion's share of today's 32/28 nm, high-K metal gate capacity."

While they are claiming to have the fab capacity lead for 28nm HKMG process, Intel, TSMC, and other foundries would feel differently.

Ron

Foldable wafers, CMOS continuing to scale, and double patterning tricks were spotlighted at the recent Common Platform Technology Forum. SANTA CLARA, Calif. – IBM sketched out its visions of the fab future at the recent Common Platform Technology Forum, the chip alliance of IBM, Globalfoundries and Samsung. IBM scientists spotlights that double patterning tricks with immersion lithography. Big Blue also showed advances in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator and plans for silicon photonics, nanowires and other new twists ahead on the semiconductor road map. The following pages provide a few excerpts from the talks, starting with lithography.

“Since the 45 nm node we have been on a steady downward path, but [extreme ultraviolet lithography] can bring us back,” said Gary Patton, chief technologist in IBM’s semiconductor research group said, referring to the foil below. “EUV represents “the biggest change in the history of lithography [because] EUV light is extremely hard to work with—it’s absorbed by any material, including reflective lenses and masks,” he added.

Nevertheless, “I believe CMOS scaling will continue, [but] it will require disruptive technologies such as carbon nanotubes and silicon photonics,” he said.


It's double vision going forward

.
Seeing clearly with double vision

After FinFETs, it's nanowires and photonics


The next big thing after FinFETS will be carbon nanotubes, said Patton. They offer a ten-fold performance boost but still contain too many metal impurities for commercial use, a problem IBM researchers are addressing.

“The next step is photonics, modulators controlling multiple nanophotonics waveguides with multiple frequencies--the trick is integrating them” in CMOS, he said, showing IBM's work above. “The ultimate is 3-D packaging and photonics,” he said showing a Holy Grail design (below) that could sport a TByte/second of bandwidth.



Mobile and cloud are the drivers

Trio claims domiance in HKMG