Productivity and Cyclicality in Semiconductors Trends, Implications, and Questions: Report of a Symposium (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Panel I: Productivity Trends in the Semiconductor Industry
Panel I: Productivity Trends in the Semiconductor Industry
Pages 6-20
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From page 6... ...
Doering Texas Instruments Dr. Doering began by describing the basic features of CMOS, a technology based on a Complementary Metal Oxide Silicon capacitor structure.
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He showed an illustration of the basic features of the transistor superimposed on a transmission electron micrograph to indicate the scale used in building transistors today. Small dots visible in the silicon substrate represented individual atoms of the transistor.
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The manufacturing cost of a square centimeter of silicon for large-volume product such as Dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory does rise slowly, but its rate of increase has so far remained small in comparison to the rate at which engineers have been able to gain efficiency/economy by "scaling down" the feature size of transistors, diodes, capacitors, thyristors, and other individual components built into integrated circuits.
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For example, said Dr. Doering, when he first came to Texas Instruments, the feature size of integrated circuits was about 2 microns; engineers were then predicting that the effectiveness of optical lithography would end when a feature size of about 1 micron was reached.
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This is known as "good scaling behavior." Good scaling behavior also holds true for transistor capacitance, current, and switching power. Voltage scaling introduces some challenges, however; engineers are less confident that lower voltages can continue to be used effectively as thermal noise levels and other voltage limits are approached.
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This current flow is dominated by quantum mechanical "tunneling" of electrons through the barrier, which cannot be prevented in extremely thin layers of any insulator. A possible solution to this problem is to use a material with a higher dielectric constant, such as particular metal oxides or silicates, which can be thicker than silicon dioxide for the same electrical performance.
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From page 12... ...
The previous full revision was done in 2001, following a mid-term update in 2000. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors had about 200 participants in the United States-almost half from chip makers, about 30 percent from the supplier community, and the rest from SEMATECH, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, other consortia, universities, government, and other institutions.
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He concluded by saying that the consensus now on purely physical limits is that the industry can expect at least 10 more years of CMOS scaling and perhaps 15 years, which represents the current horizon of the roadmap. Beyond that horizon loom a number of technologies, most of them in the very early stages of research, which have the potential to complement CMOS and to allow it to accomplish even more in future integrated circuits.
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Scalise to respond to the issues of challenges to productivity gains in light of existing business models, and of what the industry might expect as it restructures and continues to tighten its operations in light of the current, constrained economic conditions.
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The foundries, he said, have been investing approximately 100 percent of revenues, which is "far beyond anything that can be tolerated in terms of a reasonable business environment." The consequence of the recent surge in manufacturing capacity, said Mr. Scalise, is "excessive price attrition," well beyond what the traditional integrated firms can compete with.
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2. In light of the overbuild of manufacturing capacity during the current downturn in the business cycle, it is harder for companies to maintain profits.
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"What you really have is people identifying technical challenges they call `showstoppers,'" he said, "and trying to mobilize people to address those `choke points.'" He said that the situation was the first example he knew of a competitive industry, rather than organizing as a cartel or monopoly, collaborating on the technology-investment aspect of the business only. He added that the practice was explicitly legal because of the Limbert antitrust exemption that had been granted to joint research cartels in 1984.
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The industry is promoting this transition on an international basis, guided largely by the international roadmap. Similarly, unlike 5 years ago, today only a few of the traditional integrated device manufacturers, who integrate design and manufacture, can afford to invest in wafer fabs.
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The Question of Government Support Dr. Wessner noted that STEP would soon be releasing a report based on a semiconductor conference held late last year.5 Participants included members of semiconductor consortia from Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, all of whom reported substantial government support.
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20 PRODUCTIVITY AND CYCLICALITY IN SEMICONDUCTORS they can be picked up by industry. Where that point of transition between academia and industry is located has shifted today toward academia, because we don't have as many large industrial labs that work at the breadth and depth they used to." Because of industry's reduced ability to do long-term research, he suggested additional government investments in the university research community for programs that can move the technology closer to the commercialization stage than was the practice 10 to 20 years ago.
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