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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (52143)	3/9/1999 4:13:00 PM
From: Shane Geary	Respond to of 1571812

Very good news today - AMD BUY an ASML 193nm step-and-scan for the SDC. This is pretty encouraging. The system is called 'production-worthy' mainly because it is a full-field system (a stepper prints the circuit pattern on a very small area of the wafer and then 'step and repeats' it all over the wafer. A step-and-scan tool is very similar but prints the pattern in a scanning motion and then steps to a new area of the wafer etc. The imaging quality of the lenses used in a stepper are inversely proportional to the field diameter and the lens cost is proportional to the third power of the diameter. Thus research machines always have tiny field sizes - but would take so long to expose a wafer that they are not cost effective even if you could fit a single die on the field.) In reality, neither the scanner nor the associated photoresist technology (nor the mask technology) are anywhere near acceptable for true production. Still, it's nice to know that the commitment is being made (the tool plus the resist processing equipment probably cost ~$15million). --------------------------------------------------------- semibiznews.com AMD receives 193-nm lithography tool from ASML A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story posted 1:15 p.m. EST/10:15 a.m., PST, 3/9/99 SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today said it has taken delivery of the first production-worthy, full-field 193-nm step-and-scan lithography system from ASM Lithography. The ASML tool, called the PAS 5500/900, will be used in AMD's Submicron Development Center for development of next-generation microprocessors and flash memory ICs, said David Kyser, director of advanced process R&D at the Sunnyvale-based chip maker. "This 193 nm tool will give SDC in Sunnyvale the very advanced capability to continue research, development and demonstration of leading-edge lithography processes and device designs for rapid introduction into our manufacturing facilities in Austin and soon in Dresden, Germany," Kyser said. The 193-nm lithography tool was announced last September 1998 and it feature an imaging area of 26-mm by 33-mm. The system features a numerical aperture (NA) that is adjustable form 0.45 to 0.6, according to AMSL, based in Veldhoven, The Netherlands. Most lithography experts believe the 193-nm lithography generation will be widely used by chip makers in a couple of years to produce ICs with minimum feature sizes of 0.15 micron or smaller. With phase-shifting optical masks, the 193-nm step-and-scan systems could be used to manufacture chips with linewidths below 0.10 micron, according to some experts.