Europe's chip makers look ahead to next-generation R&D
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 11:30 a.m. EST/8:30 a.m., PST, 4/12/99
By Jack Robertson
MUNICH -- European semiconductor companies are starting to plan
for the "post-Medea" era -- cooperative chip research beginning in
2001 after the current four-year Microelectronics Development for
European Applications (Medea) program ends, said Jurgen Knorr,
chairman of the group.
Interviewed at SEMI Semicon Europa here today, Knorr said that it is
too early to tell what research projects and funding levels will be
proposed by current Medea company participants. More than 100
European companies are engaged in the total of 48 current Medea
projects, he said. The $2 billion Medea program, underway since
1997, is due to expire in 2000 (see story in the April publication).
Knorr expected that one potential area for continued development will
be extending logic chip design rule technology down to 0.13-micron
feature size. A current Medea project involves developing
0.18-micron design rules for logic chips.
Knorr, who retired several years ago as head of the then-Siemens
AG Semiconductor Group, said increased research in smaller line
geometries is essential to keeping pacewith the SIA Semiconductor
Technology Roadmap. He said that as the roadmap accelerates the
timetable for each new chip generation --0.13 micron chips have now
been moved up to 2002 -- European producers will keep pace with
the faster technology implementaiton.
He said the European industry is also looking at advanced lithography,
system-on-a-chip testing, and packaging as areas that deserve
continued research. Medea this year launched an extreme ultraviolet
(EUV) optics development program with ASM Lithography NV and
Carl Zeiss GmbH. He believed that further EUV research was
possible in the future to give European industry a major place in the
Intel Corp.-backed next-generation lithography system. |
