Intel pushes for more research beyond 10-nm
And the methods of pre-competitive collaborative research that have served the industry so far will have to change and be opened up, Mayberry said, as he gave a keynote speech to the IMEC Technology Forum being held here.
Local research institute IMEC works in collaboration with all the major semiconductor companies and its two-day annual forum provides an opportunity for engineering managers and senior executives from around the world to congregate.
Mayberry said that everything up to the 10-nm CMOS node – which is in development at Intel and will ramp production in 2015 – is effectively done. However, he said his job depends on being able to continue to double density and performance every two years beyond that, something for which the way forward is much less clear.
There are numerous ideas that may provide a continuation of silicon such as the introduction of germanium, III-V materials into the transistor channel and the move from fins to vertical wires or dots with gate-all-around (GAA) structures. However, once all of that has been worked through, at great cost, where do you go next, he asked the audience.
Not surprisingly Intel has been contemplating this issue and a few years ago created an internal nanoelectronics research initiative, which has come up with about 20 different ideas for information switching technologies. Mayberry showed a slide with several ideas based on spintronics were information is contained in the spin of electrons.
However, several ideas probably need to be pursued at the same time because it is likely to take a decade or more to bring a radical change in the fundamental operation of electronic circuits to maturity. And all this has to be done in a climate of business consolidation, Mayberry said.
Mike Mayberry, director of component research at Intel, talks to a packed auditorium at the IMEC Technology Forum.
More research during business consolidation
Mayberry jumped back to 1998 when the U.S. based technology research consortium Semiconductor Research Corp. had 34 members, when the International Technology Roadmap on Semiconductors (ITRS) initiative was started and when Intel first joined an IMEC research program.
Mayberry drew a picture of remarkable consistency of ideas with many companies pooling their research through a pre-competitive funnel which ended up with essentially one manufacturing process used by multiple companies for multiple products. Although Mayberry didn’t mention it explicitly it seems likely that the technical homogeneity has promoted the foundry/fabless business model and consolidation on the manufacturing side of the semiconductor industry.
Jump forward to 2013 and SRC has 13 members. "There are fewer customers for the research and perception issues with governments," said Mayberry. There is a temptation to become a customer of such research collaborations but in fact the industry as a whole needs to move to the left, to move upstream and support a range of research on dissimilar processes, Mayberry asserted.
The industry demands constant innovation and novel materials deployed in complex 3-D structures will likely become the norm, he said. "Today we have even more choices than we have had in the past – this is both good and bad for research," Mayberry concluded.
When challenged from the floor that he was ignoring the economic crunch of researching more technologies from an industry base that is experiencing declining growth, declining margins and is generally under pressure, Mayberry said it about making choices.
"It is a question of funding the right cooperations. In the industry there is enough total money available. It is like saving for your pension fund. A choice between enjoying the expensive car today or putting something aside to fund the future."
What lies in the fog of technical uncertainty? The end of the road for silicon development, or just an inflection point, Mayberry asked of the ITF audience.
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