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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (27075)	12/9/1998 10:03:00 PM
From: SMALL FRY	Respond to of 70976

Jeffrey D, I'm no techie either... I came across the same article on the Cyrix/NSM thread but paid it no mind ( Message 6763124 ) since...to ME (and ME only), all it means is that INTC is staying away from the CU process (or production) for now and since they're running their "aluminum wiring" at 900MHz (or so they claim) then all it tells ME is that there's much more space up there above what 450MHz run at... and since CU is a better material, it can go higher once it's all perfected... and from the way it looks IBM Microelectronics is knee deep in it... deeper than INTC, I would guess. Someone help me here... I am making an a** of myself. Who's the resident EE here? Heeelppp!!! Jeff... I can tell you how a fuel control works... or maybe a rudder actuator... <<<VBG>>> Ciao, SF

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (27075)	12/10/1998 10:51:00 AM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Jeffrey and SMALL FRY, re: "Intel sticks with aluminum at 0.18 microns." Intel went public about six months ago with the position that they would stay with Aluminum vs. going over to copper for the 0.18 micron geometry process . IBM and then Motorola made some splashes back then about Cu, saying its lower resistivity than Al would, with the very high logic density and , therefore, power in the latest chips, start to make a difference in power dissipation and speed. Also, they have the Cu process "ready". Intel countered that, for now (0.18) it is more important to continue to improve on-chip transistor speed characteristics and lower k dielectric. From the Cyrix thread, process development consultant Yousef: Intel is running at 900mhz on their SRAM process development test chip. The corresponding 4Mb test chip in the .25um process I believe ran at about 350-400mhz. This just indicates that there is some more "Mhz headroom" on their new .18um process. Also, Intel is using a power supply voltage of a scant 1.5 volts getting that speed. This, and Yousef's comment says it all. In the meanwhile, IBM, #1 proponent of Cu, has yet to announce a chip even at 450 MHz, whereas Intel will be there with 500, 533 and up in 1H99 (Katmai et al). Also from the Cyrix thread, some yahoo named Tony: Copper, we don't need no steenking copper! However, Intel has announced the will go to copper for 0.13 micron, in about 2001, don't know if 100%, or not. Tony

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (27075)	12/10/1998 11:39:00 AM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Jeff, re copper in ICs, another post showed up on the AMD thread by Yousef, the resident SI chip processing expert. Anyone wanting to really get into the nitty gritties can read it. I'll copy just his conclusion, the URL is up to you. Also, I guess this is enough hyping of the Intel process here. Lastly ... Intel has demonstrated a 900mhz 16Mb SRAM in this process. This is more important than most realize because the .25um 4Mb process development test chip ran at ~ 400mhz. This means that there is probably more "Mhz headroom" above 900mhz ... And finally, this will be available in volume by mid-'99. No other CPU vendor will have a .18um process that will be able to touch the performance of this process. The process that AMD is purchasing from Motorolo will not meet this level of performance until 1+ year after the Intel release. Message 6766898

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (27075)	12/17/1998 9:25:00 AM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Respond to of 70976

The pro-aluminum forces, which seems to include Intel, argue that the barrier layers needed for copper add too much capacitance and drain away a lot of copper's advantages. Moreover, crosstalk is a big problem at high frequencies, and aluminum has better crosstalk characteristics than copper. news.semiconductoronline.com Even before that became clear, the consensus at IEDM '97 was that copper was not needed for performance at 0.18 micron, but that it did offer potentially significant electromigration and cost advantages. (Sorry, no link. That meeting was before I joined Semiconductor Online.) Katherine