The few chipmakers that lead technology development are betting that by next year extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) will take transistor densities on semiconductors another step closer to their physical limits.
Intel, once the world’s biggest chipmaker, appears to have given up efforts to lead the pack in EUV. The company was among the first to start EUV development in the late 1990s.
Intel will not be inserting EUV anytime soon, according to Mark Li, an electronics engineer and analyst with Bernstein. The company is having difficulties ramping 10nm, and EUV in Intel’s 7nm, expected several years from now, remains an open question, he adds.
In the meantime, Samsung and TSMC are pressing ahead with EUV, albeit cautiously. While Samsung and TSMC are developing EUV for introduction in 2019, the rest of the world’s major chipmakers appear to be falling behind.
Intel, for now, appears to be a distant third in the race.
“Intel has effectively lost its manufacturing leadership,” according to Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Susquehanna.
Globalfoundries last year said it expects to use EUV tools in 2019 production flows to make contacts and cut masks.
Samsung will introduce 7nm, the newest node, later than TSMC but with EUV, according to Li. While TSMC's enhanced version of 7nm, called 7nm+, will be slightly later with fewer EUV layers, the flexibility of having both EUV and non-EUV versions will be an advantage, he says.
Samsung has consistently planned for EUV insertion with a minimum of 8-10 layers at 7nm compared with a few layers that TSMC has planned at 7nm+, according to Hosseini.
Intel may be biding its time until the technology is more mature.
The company told EE Times last year that it is committed to bringing EUV into production as soon as the technology is ready at an effective cost. Intel may not insert EUV into its process technology until late 2021, according to a forecast from Bernstein.