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Freescale's Wild coins a good descriptive phrase or two at NSTI |
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May 25, 2007 at 05:05 PM |
Although the NSTI Nanotech/Cleantech conference slung most things semiconductor under the "nanofab" and "nanoelectronics" banners, there was a fair smattering of presentations from the chipmaking world, especially the research community.
Throw in another batch of papers that discussed leveraging of semi processing or tools or expertise for applications in MEMS/NEMS, nanobiomed, photovoltaics, etc., and the influence of semiconductor fabrication spread its loving tentacles even further into NSTI's vast technical matrix.
But for a 100%-pure, no-additive semiconductor presentation, one need go no further than the Andreas Wild's talk on CMOS process and design options for 32-nm and beyond on Wednesday morning. Although the Freescale R&D director didn't cover any ground that hadn't been covered in similar presentations at various chip-centric technology and business events, it still provided a decent overview of economies of scale, device scaling, design for manufacturability, system in package, and other challenges facing the semiconductor community as it careens toward half-pitches less than a third of the size of the 100-nm cutoff cited by many as the borderline between micro and nano.
Noting the industry's "search for solutions in the periodic table" and that "convincing atoms to deposit where you want is not easy" (chemistry's doesn't have physics' precision, after all), he offered the following catchphrase to underscore the exponential increase of process and other variations in the sub-45-nm and especially sub-32-nm realms: "We have to master the rare events to perfection every time."
Mastering the rare events. Sounds like a slogan for all manner of nanomanufacturing pursuits, not just next-gen chipmaking.
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