ted - <EP, no, Intel has said they are late and have blamed it on the slowness of the equipment makers......lately, its seems that Intel is very good at the blaming game.>
You are confusing two different issues ted, i.e., the general issue of long lead times for equipment delivery from the equipment vendors (Spliter to Equipment makers in Pebble Beach last week), versus Intel's specific stance on when and why it will go to Cu at .13, which it has had for two + years, since sometime shortly after IBM and MOT announced that they had Cu process.
These posts should help you sort it out.
On Long lead times for equipment in general (macro issue for whole industry):
eet.com
"Our technology cycles have shrunk over the last 10 years from three and half years to two years and sometime even less than two years," said Michael Splinter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group. "When the technology gets that fast, there isn't a whole lot of time to wait...we need that mature equipment performance and run rate early in the life cycle of the technology right out of the box. That's a huge expenditure for us today, waiting and working and driving the pieces of equipment to maturity.
Intel Process gurus speaking on why Intel is not going to Cu at .18:
eet.com
Copper is a more expensive technology, and the benefits at 0.18-micron line widths are not compelling, Bohr said. The same cost-vs.-performance argument pertains to silicon on insulator (SOI). "I have not seen the data, even from IBM, that shows a performance advantage in going to SOI," said Bohr. There is a paper [from IBM] at this conference that has a 10-ps stage delay with an 80-nm gate. We achieved an 11-ps stage delay with a 130-nm gate today, in a process that is shippable next year."
Supporting January 2000 article from Semiconductor International:
semiconductor.net
Though copper interconnects originally offered the promise of 30% faster devices with fewer metal levels and lower-cost production, few companies have attained such dramatic performance and economic advantages with copper. Surprisingly, for some companies "copper is actually more of a cost driver than a performance driver, making low-k the key enabler for high performance," says FSI's Rode.
Now, if you want to keep up the obfuscation, I would ask you to post some links. (per milo's suggestion).
PB |
