A few days ago Intel introduced several technological achievements implemented with the help of a new 90nm manufacturing technology. With this 90nm technology Intel created some semiconductor structures and memory chips with outstanding parameters. Next year the technology should be brought to mass production lines using 300mm wafers.

The new manufacturing technology allows integrating much more powerful transistors onto processor dies, using the so called strained silicon, cooper interconnect, and new low-k dielectric:

• Enhanced transistors. The new 90nm Intel manufacturing technology uses new transistors with only 50nm dimension. These are the smallest and the fastest complementary metal-oxide semiconductor transistors in mass production today. For a better comparison: Pentium 4 transistors are 60nm in diameter. Gate oxide of the new transistors is less than 5 atomic layers thick (1.2nm). This extremely thin oxide layer improves the transistor’s performance significantly.
• Strained silicon. Intel corporation used in the new manufacturing technology their own highly efficient strained silicon technology. The use of strained silicon ensures faster electron flow and hole mobility and speeds up the transistors. The new Intel’s manufacturing technology is the first technology in the entire industry using strained silicon.
• Copper interconnect with low-k dielectric. The new technology also implies the use of new dielectric material: carbon-doped oxide (CDO), which speed up the intra-chip communication and reduces chip power. Simple 2-layer dielectric stack used for low capacitance and low cost.

Last February Intel Corporation manufactured the world’s fastest 52Mbit synchronous memory SRAM chips with 90nm technology. These fully functional chips contain 330 million transistors and on only 109sq.mm. The smaller SRAM cells allow increasing the cache memory capacity and as a result the CPU performance. These chips were manufactured on Intel’s trial fab in Hillsboro (Oregon). This fab, D1C, sing 300mm wafers is a kind of proving ground for the new manufacturing technology.

The 90nm manufacturing technology introduced by Intel uses 7 layers of highly efficient copper compounds. To implement this technology they use lithography equipment with 248nm and 193mn wavelength. The corporation plans to involve 75% of process tools used on 300mm version of 0.13micron technology. This should reduce the implementation costs and provide enough resources for rapid increase in the production volumes. 90nm technology will be ramped to high volume in D1C fab and transferred to other 300mm manufacturing fabs starting 2003.

By 2003 Intel is going to start using 90nm technology on three fabs working with 300mm wafers. Not so long ago they announced that they had resumed the construction of Fab 24 in Ireland. This fab with over 1 million sq. feet area costing around 2 billion dollars is designed for the production of progressive semiconductor components from 300mm silicon wafers with the manufacturing technology based on the latest 90nm process.

One of the first mass pieces produced with the new technology will be a new Prescott processor based on Intel NetBurst architecture and scheduled for H2 2003.