News re 300mm posted by BillyG on the CYMI thread:
From: BillyG
SIA roadmap draft calls for no die size increase in next decade
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 3 p.m. EST/noon, PST, 7/13/99
By Jack Robertson
SAN FRANCISCO -- The first draft of the 1999 SIA International
Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors will hold die size constant
for all new generation chips through 2012 due to aggressive shrinks --
potentially slowing the need for volume production of 300-mm wafers.
Industry sources, who attended the International Roadmap workshop
held by the Semiconductor Industry Association last week in San
Francisco, said the SIA drafters scuttled previous forecasts that
called for increasingly larger die size with each new generation chip.
Due to aggressive shrinks, the SIA roadmap working groups now
believe each new generation, despite a big increase in transistor
count, will shrink to about the 22-mm by 22-mm die size that has been
holding constant for the last year or more.
Some sources said a constant die size for new generation chips
removes one of the compelling reasons behind the need for production
300-mm fabs. It definitely would push plans for the even larger
450-mm wafer even further into the future. An early motivation
behind the larger wafers was to get acceptable yields on dies that
originally were projected to grow in size with each new generation
node.
"If chip makers can get similar yields of higher performance ICs on
the same size die using current 200-mm fabs, there is less demand to
push aggressively to build costly new 300-mm fabs," one equipment
maker executive said. He added that chip firms would continue to
build 300-mm pilot lines to gain experience, but might defer the timing
of moving to full production 300-mm fabs.
A DRAM chip maker also said even if die size remains the same for
next generation device densities, memory firms might elect to go to
300-mm fabs to get even higher quantities of chips. "The economics
of the DRAM market dictate you produce the largest number of chips
economically feasible," he said. The constant die size also is expected
to put the final nail in the coffin for larger reticle sizes -- either 7-inch
or 9-inch. If die size doesn't increase, then the present 6-inch retcile
field of view is adequate for new generation chips for the foreseeable
future.
One lithography executive added that the roadmap will add an 8-inch
round reticle to accommodate Lucent Technologies' Scalpel electron
beam projection system.
A constant die size also changes projections for silicon usage in the
years ahead, since the expected larger quantities originally seen in
earlier roadmaps will no longer be needed. |
