July 2015 – At the IMEC Technology Forum prior to the start of Semicon West 2015, President Luc Van Den Hove started his presentation with bringing the times when the servants were on service for rich people. They were “invisible” eyes and hands that were ready for any request. Today, the role of technology is…
December 2014 – At the 60th IEDM conference in San Francisco, IMEC presented a talk on using traditional CMOS processing for enhancing imaging systems. The presentation focused on the the creation of an integrated hyperspectral and multispectral imager. Typical consumer imagers have a three color spectral pickup – Red, Green, and Blue. Many industrial, medical…
July 7, 2014, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Wilfred Vandervorst described the challenges and science of measurements, and noted the great differences between lab and fab use modes and requirements. The latest tools are enabling new insights into fundamental physics and in ramping yields on the next-generations processes. The labs tend to work on the nano-scale…
July 7, 2014, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—An Steegen from IMEC described the requirements and readiness of next-generation processes for semiconductors. The production of semiconductors beyond 14nm is going to challenge our existing design and manufacturing flows and will take new devices and technologies to replace out CMOS infrastructure. The general industry directions are for…
July, 7, 2014, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Bobby Bell from KLA-Tencor talked about the exponentially changing technologies underlying the next generations of semiconductor manufacturing. The economics of the industry are presenting rapidly rising costs and are driving further industry consolidation. The trend of lower costs per gate is no longer valid as the process technologies…
July 7, 2014, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—A panel considered the likelihood of an inflection point in the semiconductor industry. Debra Vogler from Instant Insights moderated the panel. Panelists were: John Chen from nvidia, Richard Gottscho from LAM Research, Terry Brewer from Brewer Science, Christophe Fouquet from ASML, and Luc Van den Hove from IMEC….
July 8, 2013, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Martin van den Brink from ASML discussed the progress and prospects for next-generation lithography. The challenge is to reduce costs and improve performance at the same time. Current assumptions are we will extend 193nm immersion lithography to 10nm. There are no fundamental limits with quad patterns, but logic…
July 8, 2013, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Kurt Ronse from Imec talked about mastering patterning costs for future technology nodes. The biggest problems are that the technical requirements do not map well into any available technologies. Currently, 193 nm immersion lithography with multiple patterning is the workhorse technology. EUV is not ready for production, and…
July 8, 2013, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—An Steegen from Imec displayed the power, area, cost, and performance requirements for continuation of process scaling. The biggest challenge is that the increasing data traffic due to mobile and cloud drives optical scaling at the cost of power limits, increased process complexity, and cost. As defined by…
July 8, 2013, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Martin Anstice from Lam Research talked about inflection challenges and value creation opportunities from collaboration. The pace and costs of change in the semiconductor industry now make it an imperative for companies to work together. Value in this industry comes from the semiconductors, and not from the equipment….