Nobody likes schedules to slip, not airline pilots and certainly not Sunlin Chou, the senior vice president and general manager of Intel Corp.'s technology and manufacturing group in Hillsboro, Ore. Chou went to Semicon West last week with a clear message: Intel wants the cash-strapped lithography industry to keep working on extreme-ultraviolet lithography, and it is willing to invest in companies that bring EUV to commercialization.

"Lithography is so fundamental to scaling," and keeping Moore's Law intact is "a core conviction" at Intel, Chou said. Doubling the transistor density every two years is something the company "will go to any lengths" to preserve, he said, including investing, cajoling and stomping its feet.

Chou wants the lithography industry to "prune the number of options" it is working on, though he stopped short of saying which technologies should get the ax. Immersion lithography "could be very useful" and Intel remains open to using it, he said, even though "we still see the need for some longer-range technology."

How about 157-nm lithography? Again, Chou said Intel "did not rule it out." When the chip giant decided a couple of months ago not to use 157 for the 45-nm process node, that was because Intel judged 157-nm lithography won't be ready in time, he said.

Whatever its allegiance to 157 might be, Intel doesn't want the EUV schedule to slide. New forms of lithography "keep slipping out," Chou said, and if something isn't done fast, the industry may be "condemned to an eternity" of lapsed schedules.

With Sean Doyle, the managing director of Intel Capital, at his side, Chou said that Intel will invest in lithography vendors that keep working on EUV, a technology Intel likes because it is extendable over several process nodes.

Overall, "the industry should have a little more feeling of urgency," Chou said, and that includes keeping the momentum behind EUV.

It is a message both enlightened and self-serving. Intel is right to goad the industry to think ahead. But lithography vendors fear they could spend billions on a form of lithography that may not attract orders from the wide swath of the chip industry.

David Lammers covers system-on-chip process equipment. Reach him at dlammers@cmp.com.

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