The biggest news stories about semiconductors this year have focused heavily on the long and winding journey a technology takes from idea (or even raw material) to commercialization. I was in IEEE spectrum long enough to see the early days of things that only became commercial this year.
In chip manufacturing, which includes the production of next generation transistors –nanosheet transistors– and arrival nanoimprint lithography. IN optoelectronicsit was commercialization optical fiber links that go directly to the processor package.
Of course, exciting new technologies have also emerged recently, such as growing diamonds inside chips to cool them. But, unfortunately, there have also been events that prevent technology from moving from the laboratory to semiconductor production.
However, the best semiconductor stories of the year showed that the technology is full of fascinating stories.
Peter Crowther
Our readers seem to like this cool idea the most. You may have read this while relaxing with a printed copy Spectrum or maybe while you're on the phone and icing your sore knee. (Okay. I'll stop.) Stanford professor Srabanti Chowdhury explained how her team came up with a way grow diamonds inside chipsjust nanometers away from heat release transistors. The result was radio devices that were more than 50 degrees cooler and the ability to integrate high thermal conductivity material into 3D chips. The article was part special report on the problem of heating in computing, including an article on cooling chips using lasers and other wonderful works.
Left: Stefan Ziegenbalg; Right: ASML
It had a little bit of everything. This is the story of how ASML found out the key unknown in development One of the most important (and craziest) inventions in modern technologylight source for extreme ultraviolet lithography. But it's also a sweet story about a man and his grandfather, but with supernovae, atomic bomb explosions, powerful lasers and a cameo from computer pioneer John von Neumann.
Mingrui Ao, Xiucheng Zhou, et al.
Over the past years we have written a lot about advances in making individual 2D transistors perform well. But in April we presented a story about some heroic 2D semiconductor integration. Researchers in China managed to unite about 6000 molybdenum disulfide devices that allow you to make RISK-V CPU. Surprisingly, despite using only laboratory production, the creators of the chip achieved a yield of good transistors of 99.7 percent.
Our Japan correspondent John Boyd described exciting potential competitor to EUV lithography. Canon has announced the sale of the first nanoimprint lithography system for chip manufacturing. Instead of transmitting the chip's characteristics as a light pattern, this machine literally stamps them into the silicon. This is the technology that was decades in development. In fact, this was one of my first reporting trips for IEEE spectrum was to visit a startup that uses nanoimprint lithography to produce specialized optics. On the way there, I had a minor car accident and never got to see the equipment in person. But if you want to look, there is one in Austin, Texas.
IEEE spectrum; Source image: Natcast
The US CHIPS and Science Act promised to be transformative—not just for chip productionbut to provide the R&D and infrastructure that would help close terrible gap between laboratory and production it takes over and kills so many interesting ideas. The primary vehicle for this research and development and infrastructure creation was the National Semiconductor Technology Center, a legally mandated $7.4 billion program that was to be administered through a public-private partnership. But the Ministry of Commerce terminated the activities of the latter organization.called Natcast, in late summer. The vitriol with which it was done shocked many chip experts. Now commerce has killed another one Chips law center, SMART Institute USAwhich was dedicated digital twins for the production of chips.
The idea of ​​fast low-power optical interconnects all the way to the processor excited the imagination of engineers for many years. But high cost, low reliability and serious engineering problems prevented this from happening. This year we saw first hint that this will actually happen. Broadcom and Nvidia – separately – developed optical transceivers integrated into the same package as the network switch chips that transfer data from the server rack to the server rack inside data centers.
IEEE spectrum
TSMK And Intel began production of new types of transistors called nanosheets or universal gates. We've got our first look at what this means for the next generation of cuts logic chips When Both companies have provided details on SRAM memory for such new chips.. Surprisingly, both companies produce memory cells of exactly the same size, down to the nanometer. Even more surprising Synopsis designed a cell using previous generation transistors that also achieved this density, but they did not work as well.
Optical laboratory
My personal favorite of the year was a story I wrote myself as part of Problem of scaleour October special report study of all types of scale in technology. I was entrusted with an article of truly global scale –tracking a path length of 30,000 kilometers from quartz mine via silicon ingot to smartphone.
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