Chip manufacturing

04 Oct 23

The Future of Moore’s Law Is Inside This Willy Wonka Machine

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

TranscriptStephen Cass: Hello and welcome to Fixing the Future, an IEEE Spectrum podcast, where we look at concrete solutions to some big problems. I’m your host, Stephen Cass, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. And before we start, I just want to tell you that you can get the latest…

12 Jun 23

The Semiconductor Industry’s Most Important Tool Goes Green

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

In the complex quest to keep increasing the density of transistors, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the most critical tool. Costing more than US $100 million, these trailer-size systems bounce near x-ray wavelength light off of a complex cascade of mirrors and onto silicon wafers to create patterns with nanometer-scale…

23 Mar 23

Nvidia Speeds Key Chipmaking Computation by 40x

Computer & Information Technology

Nvidia says it has found a way to speed up a computation-limited step in the chipmaking process so that it happens 40 times as fast as today’s standard. Called inverse lithography, it’s a key tool that allows chipmakers to print nanometer-scale features using light with a longer wavelength than the…