SemiSerious

A couple of weeks ago, my good friend and semiconductor analysis colleague, Mark Chambers, attended the IITC in San Francisco. The sessions were held from June 4 to 6 at the Hyatt Regency at San Francisco Airport. Because the dates spanned my wedding anniversary and wife’s birthday and the conference site was far from downtown, I could not attend and Mark has promised not to engage in any “San Francisco” humour.

I talked to Mark about the IITC, and he provided me the following thoughtful and insightful comments.

DS: So Mark, do you have any comments about the conference beyond what I just read at Semiconductor International?

MC: You know how you can witness an event, spend a little time digesting it, then read an article about it and wonder if you were at the same event as the author of the article?

DS: I have the same experience if I watch an entire hockey game on TV and then see the highlights on the sports news.

MC: This article suggests that the “popular” issue of the day was 3-D integration. There were a number of interesting papers presented on the topic, including one from IBM where they mounted SRAM over an 80 core processor and made direct connection to a specific core. LETI presented, as they did last year, their scheme for 3D which uses copper “nails” which is really a variation on the through silicon via (TSV also refferred to as ISV in the article hyperlinked above), although with different processing steps.

But I don’t feel it was any more popular than other themes in the conference. In fact I would have thought there was more attention paid to the papers on low-k including the reliability issues (because there are many).

Dan Edelstein - the manager of the department that made the press release about IBM’s air gap - made a presentation that was broad in the technologies covered, but would only reveal the same info that was in the press release. A paper on IBM’s air gap will be presented at the Advanced Metallization Conference in October. Dan Edelstein will also be giving a tutorial session at that conference.

As a general comment, the papers presented this year seemed like a bit of rehash of last year, with some refinements thrown in. I sense a growing cynicism about whether we’ll see an integrated low-k in production that is less than 2.2 (obviously there is skepticism about IBM’s air/vacuum as a viable dielectric) . Overall, I was fascinated by most of the papers presented as they focused in on the practical issues of following the ITRS. I got the impression that there was no further discussion about the longevity of Moore’s Law, rather, there was a lot of imagination about what happens after its collapse. Only 2 papers on CNTs appeared this year.

DS: What was the attendance like? 

MC: I don’t have actuals but I think there were more there than last year. I’m guessing closer to 1000 which would put it at its highest attendance ever. 

DS: What type of attendees were most in evidence - students, engineers, management etc?

MC: The majority were engineering types by my guesstimates with some management and most of the posters by grad students.

DS: Were most of the attendees North American, or what guesstimate would you make of the breakdown - Asia, US, Europe?

MC: There was a strong representation from the Pacific Rim and Europe, combined probably 50%, the remainder from North America.   When I think about it China (unless you include TSMC and UMC) was conspicuously absent, at least from the list of presenters anyways. 

DS: What was the buzz?

MC: IBM’s press release on AGE (air gap exclusion) was obviously on a lot of people’s minds due to the integrity issues associated with it, but everyone from IBM was obviously told to stay mum on the subject. I had lunch with one of the team members and couldn’t pry anything out of him (discreetly, of course).Other papers on AGE included the traditional pinch off method with CVD but there was a really interesting method presented by NXP/Dow that included the use of a thermally degradable dielectric to produce voids that, if it worked as claimed, circumvented the IBM problem with mis-aligned vias.

DS: What technology seemed to attract the most attention?

MC: Not an easy question to answer. In general the audience was unemotional (refer to earlier comments on attendance). Many papers only got questions because of the long pause waiting for questions. Wafer to wafer integration (or chip to chip) seems to be emerging as a given. One paper suggested it was no longer an innovation but rather an evolution.

DS: What sessions did you attend?

MC: All presentations were in series. I went to all of them.

DS: Good answer in case your manager reads this. Which was the most interesting session?

MC: I’m fascinated by the idea of AGE. It’s interesting to watch the various approaches taken to its integration - nothing has been presented that includes data on reliability after CMP or packaging. Throw 3D on top of that (literally) and it will be interesting to see if it makes it to production. There were only 3 papers on it this year and IBM seems to be the furthest along in development (at least, according to the press). I’m aware that AGE is an old technology in some ways but so much has changed since it’s inclusion in devices from years ago. The thermally degrading dielectric looks interesting. 

Dan Edelstein made the IBM presentation that touched on AGE and was quite communicative (except with reference to AGE).

DS: What seemed to be the most popular session?

MC: I don’t recall a most popular.

DS: Hmmm… Okay, so what papers attracted the most questions?

MC: When Dan Edelstein presented his paper on advanced Cu metallization, he was able to stickhandle like Sid the Kid (DS - if you don’t get the hockey reference please link here) to avoid those referring to AGE. There were lots of questions on the thermally degrading dielectric as well.

DS: Which companies attendees seemed to be asking the most questions? 

MC: There were 3 people who were consistently asking questions, and the cynic in me thought that it was merely an attempt to get air time for themselves or their company.

DS: What technology was the hottest in terms of the number of papers?

MC: At a first glance, I would say that there were roughly an equal number of presentations surrounding 3 topics:

• lowering k in dielectrics,
• decreasing R in the metal lines and the last,
• how the first two affect reliability

DS: What company was the most prolific at the conference?

MC: I would say it’s between IMEC, Crolles2 Alliance (STM)  and Freescale. 

DS: Mark, that was great. Thanks for your time, but most of all, thank you for your analysis. You really cut through a lot of the bull that someone attending the event might have to suffer. 

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