Senior executives of semiconductor factories say that the chip industry has a long way to go, but it is facing the challenge of attracting top engineers
At the annual dinner of the semiconductor industry association (SIA) held in Silicon Valley recently, senior executives from large semiconductor factories said that the chip industry still has a long way to go, but it is facing a real challenge to attract top engineers; In addition, a micro imaging expert has demonstrated a new system that is expected to continue to push forward Moore's law in the next decade.
Zhang Zhongmou, chairman of TSMC, expressed his optimism on the continued miniaturization of semiconductor process nodes at a forum with other industry executives at the SIA annual dinner; However, he also suggested that the chip industry should gradually mature, and that the younger generation of electronic engineers could seek future development in related fields such as software, computer science and the Internet.
"The manpower demand for Fab engineers will remain fairly stable for a long time," says Zhang. "Our efforts for higher density processes will continue for at least another decade, until the mid-2020's, with 3 nanonodes - I think we'll go that far at least."
Ray Stata, another senior industry executive who participated in the forum and co-founder of ADI, said that the field of electronic engineering was shrouded in crisis, but there was still hope for scientific and technological progress beyond the microchip manufacturing process: "the EE sector is shrinking, but we still need trained personnel; and one of the challenges we face is that we cannot obtain as many EE engineers as before. As a result, the industry may need to take more responsibility for education and face-to-face with colleges and universities to let them understand the needs of the industry. "
Stata pointed out that there is an education center at MIT, which is to help support investment in semiconductor start-ups. The former semiconductor industry executive who has been transferred to investor said that the combination of existing technologies at the system level will help to make the electronics industry focusing on components more progress: "smart phones already exist But the field of analogy is still halfway through the transition period. "
Craig Barrett, former chief executive of Intel, was the most optimistic about the future among the participants. "The combination of electrons and photons is just beginning, and there are very big business opportunities there," he said. "The combination of electronics and biology has not even begun - there are unlimited business opportunities everywhere."
"When I joined Intel, people said Moore's law was coming to an end, and we had only three or four generations of technology development space." Barrett said, "there will always be people who will figure out how to make the next generation of electronic switches and change the world; So, as Robert Noyce said, "forget about history, go out and do something wonderful."
Martin Van den brink, chief technology officer of ASML, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer, who won the SIA's annual Noyce award, revealed after the meeting that the company had promised to launch an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) micro imaging system with 0.45 penta pixels / second performance in 2024; ASML recently announced that it would launch a high value aperture system, which could produce 200 wafers per hour.
in contrast, the first IC manufactured in 1958 used micro shadow technology to print only 50 pixels patterns; Van den brink said ASML had been established at that time, and when he joined the company in 1984, the performance of shadow technology had reached 61 mpixels / second: "Moore's law will not stop because we have smart engineers trying to push the industry forward."
John Kelly III, senior vice president and researcher of IBM's perception system department, said in awarding the van den brink advanced micro imaging technology award: "without him, we can't make Moore's law go so far, and we can't hope to move forward to 7 nanometers or below; The biggest risk and most important work for Martin and his company now is EUV, and the progress of this technology in the past few years is amazing. "
