During a press conference here, officials said they now expected to have early beta prototype tools ready for EUV process development by 2003, but Intel Corp. CEO Craig Barrett challenged the project to have the first production tools ready by 2003. After the press conference, Barrett told SBN that he currently anticipated that EUV production systems to be ready by the middle of the decade--around 2005--but he'd like to see those systems moved up by a couple of years.

The EUV technology is being targeted at the production of next-generation ICs, with feature sizes well below 100 nanometers (0.10 micron). The technology has become the leading candidate for next-generation lithography, but other approaches are also still being pursued--such as electron-beam projection lithography (EPL) at Nikon Corp. in Japan.

But EUV proponents believe extreme ultraviolet light lithography can be ready earlier than other approaches for volume production fabs this decade. "Our next step is to transfer the technology to lithography equipment manufacturers to develop beta and production tools," said Chuck Gwyn, program manager of the EUV Limited Liability Co.

During today's press conference, Sun Lin Chou, chairman of the EUV LLC consortium, said these beta tools are now being accelerated for availability in 2003.

Earlier this year, during a lithography conference, the EUV consortium announced it has begun demonstrating its alpha prototype tool about six to nine months ahead of schedule (see Feb. 27 story). In a related development today, TRW Inc. announced it had entered into a new extended agreement with the EUV consortium to provide new light sources for the extreme ultraviolet systems by 2003 (see April 11 story).

"The completion of the prototype machine marks a major milestone for the program, since we have proven that EUV lithography works," Gwyn said.

The prototype machine, called the Engineering Test Stand, was developed by industry-government collaboration among three U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and the EUV LLC consortium. The consortium includes Intel, Motorola Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Micron Technology Inc., Infineon Technologies AG and IBM Corp.

The three DOE national laboratories combining EUV research efforts in a "Virtual National Laboratory" are: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Sandia National Laboratories in California.