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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 48.26-0.7%3:59 PM EST
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To: L. Adam Latham who wrote (64108)9/8/1998 6:07:00 PM
From: Paul Engel  Read Replies (2) of 186894
 
Adam - Re: "... can you briefly describe what advance in fab technology made possible the 1.7V-->1.6V conversion?"

In simple terms, Intel has been able to increase the DRIVE current (Idsat) of both its n-channel and p-channel transistors. This increase comes after the 0.25 micron process has been in production, as sort of a mid-life "kicker".

The additional drive current allows transistors to operate at lower voltages and still deliver enough charge/(unit time) to charge up subsequent stages (gates) in a drive chain and maintain or improve performance.

Process improvements that permit this include the following:

1. Approximately a 5% linear reduction in poly gate lengths.

2. Silicon amorphization implant BELOW the poly gate.

3. Halo implants along the edges of both n- and p-channel transistors to help make sharper, more abrupt doping profile transitions between the source-drain regions and the adjacent bulk silicon below the poly gate edges. This may require 8 separate implant steps!

4. Source-Drain capacitance reductions with the use of additional compensation implants in the S-D regions (2 additional implants).

Except for item 1 above, a tricky Ion Implantation step was used to accomplish each of these objectives.

Somebody in Intel's TD group must have been given a carte-blanche go ahead to use as many implant steps as they could think of!

I suspect some heavy use of Ion Implanters - and new purchases - may be involved, for those looking into investments in this area.

Paul
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