This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

GloFo-Feature

Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, or EUV, has been stuck somewhere between a mirage and reality for over a decade, shimmering faintly on the horizon with promises of "4-5 years away." Meanwhile, other technologies like immersion lithography and multipatterning have been deployed to extend the limits of 193nm lithography far past its original limit. But even the best research teams and scientists tin can only extend something for so long. Concluding week, we had the opportunity to bout GlobalFoundries' Fab eight, in Republic of malta, N.Y., and to sit down and talk about how the company's roadmaps and timelines look through 2022 and beyond.

FoundryFloor

The fab space is astonishing to run across in person. You know academically how complex these things are, but seeing them is something dissimilar.

First, despite being congenital from the ground upwards as a 28nm fab back in 2022, the fab has been converted entirely to 14nm, with initial 7nm pilot production as well underway. All previous nodes have been moved to other facilities. GlobalFoundries 22FDX platform (that's the 22nm planar FD-SOI solution), for example, is built in Dresden, at the former AMD foundry now known as Fab 1.

Moving EUV From Wishful Thinking to Reality

At that place's been a cracking deal of talk in the semiconductor industry virtually when EUV would arrive and what node it would use. GF is working on introducing EUV at 7nm, but it's merely going to come across limited utilise for contacts and vias, not as part of the critical path. One matter we saw while at the foundry was the ongoing installation of two massive ASML NXE:3400B tools to support the company'due south future production (GF has cleared space for four machines in total).

GF-EUV-1

One reason GF is moving forward with a limited initial deployment of EUV is because the pellicle has been so difficult to develop. Using extreme ultraviolet light at xiii.5nm is then difficult because EUV is absorbed by literally nigh everything. That'due south why the inside of the manufacturing arrangement has to maintain vacuum conditions. Correct now, there isn't a good pellicle solution for EUV (the pellicle is a transparent cover that sits over the mask and prevents particles from landing it). Currently, only near 77 percentage of EUV calorie-free can make it through the pellicle layer, and that'southward non enough for total integration into the production line.

Why practice you need to keep particles off the mask? Because, without a pellicle, any foreign object on the mask volition be printed to the wafer. And while some pellicle solutions have been plant, they don't tend to survive well at the high source ability required for full production integration.

EUV has fabricated great strides on multiple bug, merely pellicles remain problematic. Epitome by ASML.

Here's the (extremely simplified) problem: One of the biggest problem with EUV has been source ability. All else equal, college source power = college throughput, and a modern foundry lives and dies on its wafers per hour throughput. The long-term goal is to notice a pellicle solution that tin handle high initial source power (up to 250W) at higher efficiency rate (the current pellicle is ~77 percent efficient, the goal is ~88 percentage).

EUV-HVM

HVM = Loftier Volume Manufacturing.

GlobalFoundries' solution? Use EUV for contacts and vias while a pellicle solution is beingness worked on. Since you don't demand i for these areas of the bit, you can increase EUV throughput and reduce cycle time. Going frontwards, GF will prefer EUV for more critical mask layers. The CTO and SVP of Worldwide R&D at GF, Dr. Gary Patton, has suggested EUV is a functional requirement for 5nm or below. The sheer number of masks required at that point could otherwise make it infeasible for any customer to justify using the technology.

GF-EUV-7nm

One major question about GlobalFoundries' future has been how their 7nm solution would compare with that from other companies. The company's issues with its own version of 14nm, 14XM, were bad enough that it killed that product and licensed IP from Samsung instead. At 7nm, GF is trying once again to bring its own process engineering to market, and it's promising some impressive advantages. Customers should be able to deliver the same operation at 60 pct reduced power, or increase performance past upwards to 40 per centum. Unlike its competitors, GlobalFoundries is skipping 10nm altogether and heading straight for 7nm, with an AMD Vega chip designed for machine intelligence workloads manifestly serving every bit a so-called "piping cleaner" to test the blueprint and its capabilities.

As well: For those of you curious most 12nm and how it compares with 14nm, GF confirmed its 12nm is a refinement and improvement to an existing process with some optimized layouts that offer up to 10 percent performance improvement or a fifteen pct density increment. Nosotros don't know how AMD volition utilize 12nm notwithstanding for Zen+, but if I had to bet, I'd bet more on performance enhancements and less on sheer density. AMD volition have had an eye on that process equally a way to close footing compared with Intel'south Coffee Lake.

There are nonetheless questions virtually how GF will pull off the transition, how well EUV volition ramp, and what the future holds for the company, but the mood at GlobalFoundries was optimistic on both counts. Information technology's not surprising, in hindsight, that GF had trouble out of the gate. The company was spun off at a time when its largest (and initially, its but) customer was on life back up. It faced huge challenges in ramping up product and earning new customers.

Today, the company seems to be on stronger ground. AMD, which is however GF's biggest publicly known customer, is itself doing much better. Overall, GloFo seems to have significantly strengthened its own position in the foundry market, but it'll be at least a year before we know how much 7nm concern the visitor has picked up compared with the competition.