SAN JOSE, Calif. — The actor Sean Connery made a brief but surprising appearance at a reception sponsored by mask supplier Toppan Photomasks Inc. on Tuesday (Feb. 21).
Connery—or at least someone that resembles the actor—was also going back in time and impersonating his most famous character on the silver screen: James Bond.
Toppan’s idea was to bring a real live spy to the event. It was a somewhat clever play on the word SPIE—as in the SPIE Microlithography event sponsored by the International Society for Optical Engineering.
It’s still a mystery whether the real 007 attended the party, but here’s what is clear in lithography right now:
Immersion lithography is still not ready for production. Defect problems seem to be an issue with the early immersion results and chip makers are starting to get nervous. Most experts believe that 193-nm immersion will be inserted at the 45-nm node in 2007. Stay tuned.
Not surprisingly, optical lithography continues to push out the newfangled approaches, including extreme ultraviolet (EUV), maskless lithography and nano-imprint.
EUV is still a long ways from being real. Even Intel Corp., the big proponent of EUV, has pushed out the technology. And one SPIE speaker believes an EUV tool will run about $60 million per unit — if or when a system finally gets shipped!
Maskless and nano-imprint lithography are still a number of years away for mainstream semiconductor production.
No one is quite sure how chips will become manufactured at the 32-nm node, which is slated for 2009. At present, there is no consensus about which lithography technology will be used at the 32-nm node.
Everyone is confused about the definitions of the technology nodes. The nodes are being tossed around like numbers at a cheap auction. It’s become a mere marketing game for chip makers to brag about their new processes. Stop with the games!
Finally, the 007 issue. The gentlemen who claimed to be Sean Connery at the reception seemed to be more real than most of the papers at SPIE.
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