2003 ITRS Highlights
01/01/2004
Solid State Technology asked ITRS leaders to highlight changes in the latest roadmap.
The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) is a consensus reference document with a 15-year outlook on the requirements of the semiconductor industry. It provides the needs and possible solutions. But it is up to IC manufacturers and equipment/material suppliers to identify the detailed solutions and to proceed toward their implementation.
The newly released version of the ITRS represents the sixth version of this roadmap, which has been jointly produced by researchers from Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the US since 1998. The cooperation among researchers from these five regions has greatly enhanced the content of the roadmap; previously, US researchers alone had produced three editions of the NTRS (National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors).
The 2003 ITRS represents a full rewrite of the document since the 2001 ITRS. The versions generated in the even years are limited in scope to editing the tables of the previous year's version. The numbers contained in the tables are coded in white, yellow, or red, depending on whether manufacturing solutions exist and are being optimized, manufacturing solutions are known, or manufacturable solutions are not known, respectively. A new category has been introduced in the 2003 ITRS to identify cases in which "interim solutions are known." This category indicates that a "workaround" was implemented, since the needed solution (an adequate metrology tool, for example) was not available at the time of initial manufacturing.
Beginning in the year 2000, the semiconductor industry entered the nanotechnology era by shipping products with horizontal features (such as gate width) <100nm in conjunction with a gate oxide thickness close to 1nm. The section "Emerging Research Devices" has been further enhanced to include a variety of new devices operating on new quantum mechanics variables and other novel concepts.
Finally, a new sub-chapter on "RF and Analog/Mixed-signal Technologies for Wireless Communications" has been introduced to put into perspective, for the first time, the relative merits of silicon-based devices vs. devices made with compound semiconductors.
The main novelty of the 2003 ITRS consists in the announcement that, for the first time since 1997, the industry did not introduce the next technology node "hp90" according to the two-year pace that has been established lately. The ITRS technology node definition refers to the half pitch of the first layer of metal of the leading DRAM product. The shipment, by at least two IC companies, of introductory components (at least 10,000/month) within three months of each other, needs to be announced/verified in order to declare that a specific technology node has been realized. Shipments of up to 1 million units and beyond, depending upon the specific IC manufacturer's methodology, normally follow within three to twelve months. The introduction of hp65 and hp45 is forecasted to occur on a three-year cycle. The implication of the return to the historical three-year cycle carries the implication that 450mm wafers will be needed sometime in the 2011–2012 timeframe, however, to maintain the historical 25–30%/year cost reduction per function that has characterized the semiconductor industry from the very beginning. Will the upcoming industry upturn bring back enough energy into equipment/material suppliers and IC makers to repeat the acceleration to a two-year cycle? Stay tuned.
An additional surprise of the 2003 ITRS comes from the announcement that lithography will not be a limiting factor in the introduction of hp65, and that similar considerations may apply also to hp45. The successful introduction into manufacturing of 193nm exposure tools by several companies at hp90 is instilling new confidence in the lithography researchers. After failing the insertion into manufacturing at hp180 and hp130, finally the lithography era of 193nm exposure tools is on. Many resolution enhancements will be necessary in order to meet the technology requirements, but the leading IC companies have gotten used to dealing with these technical challenges, though at a price (e.g., high mask cost, design rules' limitations).
The wonders of silicon dioxide in conjunction with stress silicon will allow IC manufacturers to delay by another technology node or so the introduction of high-k into manufacturing; however, experimental results continue to improve. It will be a great accomplishment when high-k goes into manufacturing at hp45, considering that the effort initiated in earnest only in 1997.
Acknowledgments
Also contributing to this overview of the 2003 ITRS were Wolfgang Arden, Infineon; Joop Bruines, Philips; Gerhard Göltz, STMicroelectronics; Toshiaki Masuhara, ASET; Toshihiko Osada, Fujitsu; Young-Jin Park, Hynix; Jack Sun, TSMC; and Makoto Yoshimi, Toshiba.
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Paolo A. Gargini, director of Technology Strategy, Intel, USA.International Roadmap Committee Chair
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Robert R. Doering, Senior Fellow, Texas Instruments, USA International Roadmap Committee Co-Chair