Live Report from the UK where preparation for the annual Hogan’s Heroes DAC Panel is underway : What do volcanic ash clouds and 22nm have in common?
More than you think. But as you may have guessed, this is a teaser article to entice you to attend the annual Hogan’s Heroes DAC panel on Tuesday, June 15 from 10:30-11:30am in the DAC Pavilion, Booth #694. I will answer the question about ash clouds and let the panel talk about 22nm.
Some introductions to the panelists would be in order first. They are all innovators and leaders who are putting their enormous intellectual power and experience to the task of addressing 22nm. They are all well versed on the challenges of advanced nodes yet from slightly different perspectives and different segments of the semiconductor industry. These are the folks who can tell you how much of an eruption 22nm could be and about its potential effects, if not addressed by deep, industry-wide collaboration.
About the Panelists:
Jim Hogan is the moderator extraordinaire. Who else has an annual panel, Hogan’s Heroes, named after him? Jim knows all about the ash cloud and 22nm, having recently returned from an adventure hiking Hadrian’s Wall on the Scottish border. Jim has helped fund, manage, or sell many companies in the semiconductor industry over his 30+ year career. When back in the Bay Area, you can often find him at Tela Innovations where he is on the board of directors. They know a lot about 22nm and the need for double patterning techniques. Anything that had “double” in the name is probably going to cost you more. Ask Jim during the panel about the implications and what really smart engineers are trying to do about it.
Aki Fujimura is a prolific innovator of design software and platforms, our hero of vision on the panel. Aki sees things that many people don’t. Right now he’s working on the fact that in manufacturing you really want to create a circle for a contact or via but you start with a rectangle today instead. Until 22nm, this approach worked, but mask costs are now exploding . One of the answers is to exploit the rounding nature of e-beam to significantly reduce mask write times. Aki’s innovations have helped a number of companies on the road to financial success and IPOs, such as Tangent and Simplex Solutions. He sits on the board of directors for several companies while running D2S, Inc. which he founded in 2007. Come to the panel to find out why circles will be important in managing cost at 22nm.
Dr. Aaron Thean represents the transformation of theory into reality, our product hero on the panel, as he is the Engineering manager for 20/22nm CMOS technologies for Qualcomm’s CDMA Technologies. Aaron has published over 40 papers and holds 28 patents in the area of advanced semiconductor technology. He joined Qualcomm from IBM, where he served as the front-end-of-line device manager for the 28nm/32nm low-power bulk CMOS technology. At IBM, his role entailed collaborating with IBM, Chartered Semiconductors, Infineon, Samsung, Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, NECEL, and GlobalFoundaries. Come to the panel to hear Aaron’s thoughts on critical collaboration areas for 22nm.
Xin Wu is our panel’s warrior hero of manufacturing with 17 years experience at Xilinx where he has completed 10 nodes of technology development from 0.6 micron to 40nm with various foundries. One of Xin’s main concerns for 22nm technology is its cost. Double exposure requires more critical layers masks and wafer process steps; it also will add more restrictions in layout. All these eventually translate to cost in various degrees. Come to the panel to hear from Xin about the Xilinx track record of success for overcoming technology development challenges including cost.
So what do ash clouds and 22nm have in common?
Cost. It’s estimated that the airline industry alone has experience almost $2 billion in costs due to the ash cloud. We’ll never know how much of that could have been avoided, but the point now is that the heroes of the ash cloud – scientists, innovators, government and business leaders – have successfully collaborated to adapt the flight model to get airlines and people back in the air. Just like airline travel, I can’t imagine the semiconductor industry can live without a successful 22nm and that means getting to grips with minimizing the costs. I’ll see you in Anaheim, ash clouds permitting!
