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Technology
Semiconductor technology lies at the heart of the amazing revolution we are witnessing in computing, communications, consumer electronics, transportation and health care. This revolution is enabled by designing and building successive generations of chips that perform an ever increasing number of functions, run faster, and cost less. In the course of this progress, the semiconductor industry entered the nanotechnology era in the year 2000, and by 2004, the industry was shipping devices with physical gate lengths less than 40 nm and insulator thickness less than 1 nm. This reinforces the industry's position as a true nanotechnology pioneer, through continued technology advances at the pace of Moore's Law. This progress will enable future functionality and applications that we perhaps cannot even imagine today.
To sustain this remarkable pace of technology progress, we must be able to keep pushing the technological limits of semiconductor design and manufacturing even further. To build tomorrow's systems, we must learn to innovate swiftly with new design methodologies, devices and materials. This requires a large and coordinated effort in research and development among corporations, governments, and universities.
To this end, the SIA forms consortia and other partnerships to fund advanced research and pool resources and ideas. The goal is not just to maintain the technological leadership of U.S. semiconductor companies, but also to keep the innovation engine of the country and the economy vibrant and strong. The SIA pursued four major technology initiatives this past year:
- Continuing our involvement with the Focus Center Research Program - a University-based research program funded jointly with the Department of Defense, focused on cutting-edge research to take CMOS technology to its ultimate limits.
- Launching a new Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, focused on "beyond CMOS" nanotechnology.
- Publishing the 2004 update to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors.
- Lobbying and building partnerships to increase federal spending on education and research in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering.
The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors
Working with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and International SEMATECH, SIA helps semiconductor companies collaborate on technology challenges. One way we do this is by publishing the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which identifies industry trends, highlights technical obstacles, and helps companies align product cycles with developing technologies.
The 2004 ITRS update represents the 7th international version of this roadmap, reflecting input from nearly 1000 experts and researchers from Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the USA.
Innovation Highlights
2005 brought exciting developments in semiconductor technologies:
- Despite significant technology challenges, the industry continued to maintain the pace predicted by Moore's Law – the doubling of transistors every two years.
- Transistor speed continued to improve at the historical improvement rate of 17 percent per year, although the challenges became more complex due to a concurrent increase in leakage currents.
- Mobility enhancement techniques will allow transistor performance to improve as required without the introduction of high-k gates and metal electrodes materials for 65nm and maybe for 45nm.
- Lithography likely will not be a limiter down to 45nm. 193 nm, the current technology, will be challenged only at the at 32/22nm node by Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) lithography. Exposure tools with 193nm wavelength will dominate the next technology generations (65nm, 45nm and maybe 32/22nm) with both dry and immersion solutions. Control of critical dimension (CD) below 4nm will be a major issue.
- Partly due to lithography, and partly due to the inherent variability at the tiny dimensions of state-of-the-art devices, design-for-manufacturing (DFM) is growing rapidly in importance.
- Research intensified on major technology innovations like high-k dielectrics, metal gate electrodes, and multiple-gate MOS transistors, which are forecast to enter manufacturing within a decade. These represent major shifts, where some basic device materials and structures will undergo change for the first time in more than 30 years.
- The low-k interconnect dielectric roadmap is essentially unchanged for the first time in 10 years. Materials with k~2.7 are in manufacturing and k~2.4 materials will follow.
- Multiple new package solutions will be required to increase functionality and to reduce cost will require additional attention in the future.
- Mixed-signal and analog chips continue to grow in importance, driven especially by consumer and communications-related markets.
- Discussion has been initiated for possible introduction of 450mm wafers in the 2012 timeframe.
- There is a growing focus on emerging research devices and materials, as reflected in the newest roadmap chapter.
Basic Knowledge Fuels Industry Progress
To overcome formidable obstacles in design and manufacturing of devices and circuits, the semiconductor industry must conduct advanced research and train graduate students in all technology disciplines. That's why SIA formed the Semiconductor Research Corporation which, since its inception in 1982, has graduated more than 3,000 advanced degree students.
Focus Center Research Program
In collaboration with the US Government, SIA created the Focus Center Research Program (FCRP) in 1999. This program brings together the US semiconductor industry, the federal government (Department of Defense), and 30 of the nation's most prestigious universities. They collaborate on cutting-edge research deemed critical to the growth of US technology industries. It is the most ambitious research project the US chip industry has undertaken since SIA companies formed the SEMATECH consortium in 1987.
FCRP researchers investigate technology solutions for key issues (as highlighted by the ITRS) that will arise eight to ten years in the future. The FCRP's five national focus centers channeled over $25 million in 2003 into new research activities in these areas and expect to spend some $37 million in 2005. Importantly, representatives from the organizations that fund each center work with research teams to bring these advanced new technologies to market.
Here's a flavor of the exciting research currently taking place at these focus centers:
- System Design - The Gigascale System Research Center created and developed Platform-Based Design as a paradigm-shifting, design methodology for complex systems-on-a-chip. GSRC also began work on a living systems roadmap through close collaboration within GSRC, industrial partners, and the SIA roadmap effort.
- Interconnects - The Interconnect Focus Center (IFC) developed an interconnect framework for 40Terabit/s optical bandwidth, a 3D integration process for hyper-integration of devices in a circuit, and continued work on optical interconnects and on innovative micro-channel cooling for "hot" chips.
- Circuits - The Center for Circuits and Systems Solutions (C2S2) addressed the formidable power and leakage issues using novel circuit techniques, and demonstrated 33 percent energy saving and 43 percent leakage reduction for an example technology. C2S2 also developed the via patterned gate array (VPGA) as a new solution to address the manufacturing complexity and process variability issues for application specific interconnects.
- Devices - The Center for Materials, Structures and Devices (MSD) developed and demonstrated significantly improved device mobility (speed) with a strained Si channel, novel high-K dielectrics with a Ge channel MOSFETs, and the first integration of nanotubes with CMOS technology.
- Nanomaterials and nanodevices - A fifth focus center, Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA), commenced operation in 2004 with an emphasis on nanomaterials and nanodevice research.
These centers are now working with an integrated research agenda to ensure efficiency and reduce redundancy in the research effort for scaling CMOS technology to its ultimate limits.
Nanoelectronics Research Initiative
Most experts agree that CMOS will reach the end of its progression in about 15 years - hitting physical, technological and economic limits. The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) is proposed as a mission-oriented platform to accelerate and augment research "beyond CMOS" technologies. The Technology Strategy Committee of the SIA has defined its mission as follows:
"By 2020 discover and reduce to practice via technology transfer to industry novel non-CMOS devices, technology and new manufacturing paradigms, which will extend the historical cost/function reduction, along with increased performance and density for another several orders of magnitude beyond the limits of CMOS."
The effort would involve the government, industry and academia working together to link existing efforts, to identify gaps and to seed research to bridge the gaps; and to demonstrate proof-of-concept for a few, select ideas.
Reversing the Decline in Federal Funding
In the 1990s, federal funding declined precipitously in the areas most critical to our industry's continued success: the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering. This has seriously reduced the number of faculty and students in these disciplines, slowing the pace of university research and creating a shortage of skilled workers for our companies. In the past year, SIA has energetically addressed this problem:
- SIA has engaged deeply with government agencies to ensure that sufficient research resources are committed to maintain progress along the path projected by Moore's Law.
- SIA built a partnership between the NSF and SRC that will support significant funding of ITRS-related research.
- SIA was successful in increasing government funding of the Focus Center Research Program to $17 million in 2004.
Innovation Demands Investment
We rely on semiconductor technology and take it for granted in our everyday lives. But the marvels of today are really the fruits of research seeds planted decades ago-investments that either funded discoveries and new technologies or helped educate the very engineers and scientists who now form our workforce. The very fact that these advances required decades of investment stands as a warning against complacency in our future investment strategy.
Our future performance as an industry depends on our capability to create new knowledge and develop it into technologies that drive our economy, guarantee our national security, and improve health and the quality of life. Only with significant government support of R&D can we progress on the current course of miniaturization and address nanotechnology's enormous challenges with tremendous benefit for all.
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