Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography

anymouse writes "The April issue of Scientific American has this article on chip lithography using soft x-rays (extreme UV). Strange bedfellows - Intel and AMD at Sandia." Discusses the research process and technology behind the next generation of chip production.

Comments

Re:But isn't there a limit

[Deluge]

Yes, I see the '40 atoms in width' line. The heat from each of the transistors would screw up the transistor beside it. That was the limit of the copper lines within a chip. Now they're saying they've overcome that limitation?

D'ya ever get the feeling that these researchers and scientists and engineers working on chip technologies all get together at their IEEE meetings or some such thing and conspire against the world to make themselves seem smarter than they are?

And I think they do this by agreeing to publicize some arbitrary limit, a roadblock to whatever they're doing, causing all sorts of worry among the general population about what'll happen when that roadblock is hit, and then when the roadblock is approached, "OMG OMG we figured out something new, this roadblock is no longer an issue, move on folks."

It happens so often nowadays that nobody even notices it. How famous are the quotes by well known individuals claiming things like impossibility of supersonic travel, impracticality of computers, even impossibility of flight itself? Now we hear "once we reach this point in our technological sophistication, we can go no further" every 5 minutes, only to have that claim disproven another 15 min later.

Ok, i'm done.

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But isn't there a limit

[HerrGlock]

Yes, I see the '40 atoms in width' line. The heat from each of the transistors would screw up the transistor beside it. That was the limit of the copper lines within a chip. Now they're saying they've overcome that limitation?

Printing with UV lasers, no matter how sexy this might be, seems to be safer than the x-ray technology they were using. I would much rather be in a lab with the requirement for full covering goggles than have to wear a lead lined jock strap.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page