IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - 34

semiconductors

t

he modern microprocessor is one of the premier markers of technological achievement.
And rightly so. But if a billion transistors
on a postage-stamp-size chip impress you,
consider the fabrication facilities that put
them there. And not just on one chip, but on hundreds of them on dinner-plate-size wafers, which
move by the thousands through the manufacturing
line 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In a single day, a state-of-the-art fab can make
nearly 100 trillion transistors, roughly 250 times
the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Such
facilities are by any standard the most complex, and,
at an average cost of US $3 billion to build and equip,
the most costly factories ever built by humankind.
Their sheer scale astounds-one of Intel's
current-generation semiconductor fabs scatters
nearly a thousand multimillion-dollar machines in
an area more than twice the size of a regulation
soccer field. These machines perform more than
500 different steps to make a chip, and they do it
around the clock. That adds up to a mind-boggling
10 million processing steps in each fab every week.
If you think that's too much for mere human
beings to handle, you're right. Increasingly, it's software, rather than bunny-suited people, that produces
chips. In fact, our ability at Intel to beat our competitors to market with new technology depends enormously on the software we use to test, adjust, and
perfect the manufacturing processes in our fabs.

wafers must pass through on their way to becoming Pentium, Itanium, and Core 2 Duo processors,
as well as other high-end Intel microprocessors.
This software makes it possible to run a 300-mm
factory with far fewer people than we needed to
run our older 200-mm fabs. These days people
venture out onto the fab floor only to attend to
machines that the software system has sensed
need repairs or routine maintenance.
AMT also plays a crucial role in Intel's multibilliondollar-a-year R&D operations. Researchers use
the technology development manufacturing line
installed in our fab in Hillsboro, Ore., to create
and hone the manufacturing processes for all of
Intel's fabs. The procedures and recipes we concoct there for next-generation chips will be copied
exactly at one or more of the company's five (soon
seven) 300-mm fabs. That development line takes
advantage of the same hardware and software capabilities as the manufacturing lines that are producing Pentium and Core 2 Duo and Quad processors
alongside it in our Hillsboro fab. This line also tests
out new machines and software routines that are
being specifically developed and tuned for future
generations of chips.
This close coupling of our development operations and manufacturing allows us to stay on the
approximate two-year cycle defined by Moore's
Law. The current-generation process, which we
launched in 2005, produces chips in which the

is helping Intel go nano-and beyond

By Chandra Mouli & Wayne Carriker

Today's state-of-the-art fabs produce chips on minimum half-pitch-half the distance, center
300-millimeter-diameter wafers. By our count, there to center-between two wires can be as small as
are 43 commercial 300-mm fabs in production as this 65 nanometers. By the end of 2006, we had already
issue goes to press, with perhaps a dozen more slated shipped 70 million microprocessors produced by
to come online by year-end. Some are more auto- our 65-nm process. In January of this year, we
mated than others, but most 300-mm fabs have at completed the development of the next generation
least a material-handling system that uses software- of chip-making technology, which by the second
controlled robots and monorails to transport wafers half of this year will be knocking out chips in the
to the myriad tools needed to make chips-etching 45-nm process. We are also well into developing
chambers, wafer polishers, photolithographic step- 32-nm processes, to be unveiled in 2009.
pers, and the like. Most IC makers also buy or write
manufacturing software that tracks wafers through BEFORE WE dIScuSS THE SOFTWARE that
the fab, scheduling software that sends wafers to the runs our R&D line and fabs, here are the basics of
right tools at the right time, and process-control sys- the chip-making process it controls.
tems to manage the chip-making recipes-the mix
A wafer begins its trip through the fab as a
of gases, chemicals, metals, and semiconductors that mirror-polished disk of 99.9999999 percent pure
constitute each chip.
silicon, 300 mm in diameter and not quite a milliThe software suite that we write and manage, meter thick. The wafer then passes through the first
dubbed Automated Manufacturing Technology, or of many patterning processes to create the chip's
AMT, monitors and controls the hundreds of steps astounding profusion of transistors. These pattern-

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March	2007	|	IEEE	Spectrum	|	NA							39


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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum March, 2007

IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - 1
IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - 2
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IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - 48
IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - Cover4
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