SIA calls for government-funded sub-10-nm research
By Peter Clarke
Silicon Strategies
12/01/2004, 12:45 PM ET
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has announced a research program aimed at providing the United States with leadership in information technology through leadership in semiconductor manufacturing technology.
The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) would attempt to link research efforts at universities, the federal government, and the U.S. semiconductor industry, to find solutions beyond CMOS technology, the SIA said Wednesday (Dec. 1). It would target research on materials, device structures and assembly methods for microelectronic devices with feature sizes smaller than 10 nanometers, the SIA said.
However, despite the initiative's significance, which the industry organization said would influence the standard of living and security of citizens of the United States far into the future, the SIA did not indicate how much money would be required to fund the project, or how long it would be expected to last. The SIA said CMOS is likely to become obsolete within 15 years.
"The stakes in the race for technology leadership in the era beyond CMOS are extremely high," said George Scalise, president of the SIA in a statement. "Because semiconductors provide the enabling technology for virtually all computation and communications systems, leadership in semiconductor technology is essential to being competitive in the industries that drive the world's economy. Our ability to maintain a high standard of living, grow our economy, and assure our nation's security are all heavily dependent on being a leader in semiconductor technology."
"Most scientists now agree that our ability to continue the scaling of CMOS technology — the dominant technology of the semiconductor industry for the past 20 years — will reach its ultimate limit some time before 2020. We are now in a worldwide race to develop new technologies that will enable progress in semiconductor devices to continue at the pace we have seen for nearly 40 years. The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) will attempt to link research efforts by leading universities, the federal government, and the U.S. semiconductor industry in a mission-oriented effort to continue the rate of progress that has prevailed since the mid 1960s."
"We are still in the very early stages of launching the NRI," Scalise continued. "Our first order of business is to get consensus among all parties on defining and prioritizing the specific technical challenges on which to focus research. The only certainty at this point is that the existing technology, materials and production methods simply won't work when feature sizes must be smaller than 10 nanometers." Scalise said that the SIA is not proposing federal subsidies for chipmakers. "We are calling upon the federal government to support university-based research in addressing basic scientific challenges as it has done virtually since the founding of our republic," he said. |
