IMEC reports reducing high-k/metal gate process steps from 15 to 9

[Idontcare]

IMEC reduces high-k/metal gate process steps from 15 to 9

IMEC has revealed at the VLSI Symposium that its collaboration partners on its sub-32nm CMOS program have developed a simplified high-k/metal gate process that reduces the number of process steps from 15 to 9. The research center also demonstrated improvements to inverter delay from 15p/s to 10p/s.

http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/65539/

 

[myocardia]

This means what, to those of us who don't work at a fab? Not being a smartass, I just don't have a clue.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: myocardia
This means what, to those of us who don't work at a fab? Not being a smartass, I just don't have a clue.

My attempt at translation would be....

IMEC has made their sub-32nm CMOS process cheaper and faster when compared to what they used to have.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: myocardia
This means what, to those of us who don't work at a fab? Not being a smartass, I just don't have a clue.

IMEC is a research consortia based in Europe. The stated goal of all research consortia is to be on the leading edge of R&D to knock thru barriers that face the industry as a whole.

The reality is that the top guys in the industry (Intel, IBM fab club, etc) are always 2+yrs ahead of the leading edge at an industry research consortia like IMEC.

But the top guys aren't going to tell us this news when they pass these R&D milestones for competitive reasons, so when IMEC says "we are the first, hooray for us" that really means "now you know where the rest of the industry's internal R&D groups were 2 years ago"...and that tells us consumers a lot about what we can expect in about 2 years from today.

To me this PR piece from IMEC is great news as it means HK/MG is transitioning to such a mundane and trivial technology that even IMEC is able to make it work.

It means its only relatively short matter of time (12-18months) before this becomes widespread (meaning foundries) and commonplace in the production environment. Again not because the IMEC technology has any chance of transferring to the industry (it never does, trust me) but because if IMEC can do it then you can rest assured this means almost anyone else who is working on their own 32nm node has already done this same feat internally.

This will be good news to anyone who uses mobile devices (cell phones particularly) and anyone who likes low-power IC devices. Personally I am not impressed with ATOM + 945G...and why is Intel willing to push ATOM with crappy power numbers of the 945G? No competition for those other IC components in the system to be on HK/MG at this time.

Give Via and NVidia access to a HK/MG process at a foundry like TSMC and you can bet not only will Via's and NV's products run on a lot less power but Intel will suddenly become motivated to release low-power platforms where there is more than just one IC in the system that actually is low-power.