International Cooperation Helps Reduce Risks and Costs of R&D

There are enormous cost and technical benefits to be had when companies work together. Those benefits are magnified when the entire international community is involved.

Peter Singer Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 3/1/1998

International Cooperation Helps Reduce Risks and Costs of R&D

The semiconductor industry is now entering an era where we could soon see 300 mm wafers in production, containing transistors with dimensions on the order of 0.18 µm (180 nm) and interconnects made of copper conductors and low dielectric constant (low k) insulators.

Any one of these four technology shifts -- the move to 300 mm, 0.18 µm patterning, copper or low k -- represents an extreme challenge in its own right. The four of them together seem almost overwhelming. Never before has the industry tried to move to a new wafer size so quickly, pushed optical lithography so close to its fundamental limits or made such a large-scale shift to new and largely unproven materials. Now it proposes to do all four at once.

What makes me think that it just may be possible to meet this 300 mm/0.18 µm/copper/low k challenge is that semiconductor manufacturing companies have become especially skillful at pinpointing subjects that need to be researched, determining what is and what is not "precompetitive" and then closely working together to develop a solution to common problems. Not only has this proved to be the quickest way to get the work done, but the most economical and the most risk free.

This cooperation is often best coordinated under the auspices of a consortium, such as SEMATECH, or through some kind of joint development effort. "We think that precompetitive research and cooperation is a cost-effective way for the industry as a whole to tackle some of the significant technical challenges we face to stay on our manufacturing productivity curves," said Mark Melliar-Smith, president and CEO of SEMATECH, in a recent interview with Semiconductor International.

Semiconductor consortia and cooperative research are presently active in many countries worldwide. One good example of such a program presently under way is the Semiconductor Equipment Assessment (SEA) initiative in Europe, which is designed to help equipment suppliers and users "bridge the gap between process innovation and equipment productivity." More on the SEA and the programs it is sponsoring can be found in this issue (p. 133) as part of our special European coverage.

What is truly incredible is that cooperative research efforts are starting to become more international in scope. Although most consortia are still largely nationalistic, limiting participation to the companies of their country of origin, geographical and language barriers are starting to be torn down. The best example of this is the new International SEMATECH, a subsidiary of SEMATECH modeled after the I300I initiative which has included members from the United States, Europe, Taiwan and Korea, all focused on 300 mm process and tool development (see news story, p. 20). If SEMATECH, which began with a well-defined mission of helping the U.S. industry fend off foreign competitors, can now welcome these same competitors to help cooperate in solving common problems, then other consortia can certainly broaden their horizons as well.

At Semiconductor International, we too have been doing our part to tear down the barriers to international cooperation and understanding. Beginning with this issue, we will be running a table of contents listing feature articles and departments in Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese. We have also launched a brand new web site (www.Semiconductor.Net) that presents information in two languages: English and Japanese. You may also have noticed our recent supplements on Taiwan, Japan and Korea, which were presented in English and the respective foreign language as well. We have changed the way we present our news section to emphasize the global nature of the business, and we are working hard to expand the number of foreign correspondents that report the news from around the world.

It may be too much to hope for to see people and companies from around the world unite with a common goal of advancing semiconductor manufacturing know-how. But that could be the only way to meet the enormous and varied challenges that lie ahead.