It’s useful to remember that you can’t have chips without silicon. Here’s a 30-cm ingot, demonstrating how far we’ve come in growing huge crystals. Does anyone know how many slices can be made from this thing?
Here are some examples of wafers cut from such an ingot at the Samsung booth.
Speaking of wafers, here I am with Markus Lutz of SiTime, the initial inventor of InChipMEMS technology, which allows vacuum-sealed MEMS structures to be manufactured in ultra-pure wafer cavities with integrated CMOS and placed in low-cost industry standard packages. SiTime is using the technology to create a MEMS timing device that is more robust and stable than crystal oscillators.
Here’s a video of The “Murata Boy” bicycling robot. (It will open in a new window.)
Here are a few vintage vehicles used to capture the interest of passers-by.
Speaking of vehicles, here are a couple of interesting things I found outside of the show. The first is a Citroen limo that was parked at a gas station outside of my hotel (that’s my daughter Xenia in the picture, BTW), and the second is a full-size mockup of the German MagLev train outside of the Munich Airport.
Here’s a link to the previous coverage.
They say that over a thousand wafers can be sliced from each ingot.
Man, I’ve had that “you can only post every 15-seconds, slow down cowboy” message before, but this is the first time using the “back” button has returned me to a blank comments section. Ouch! That whole entry lost. 🙁
The reader’s digest version, because I’m too lazy to re-type it all:
This pdf – with an abundance of details regarding the production process – estimates 839-wafers per 300mm ingot [on page 50 of 52].
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/mse/ugrad/Silicon_Presentation.pdf
Is it just me, or does the ingot look like one of Silver Surfer’s doots?
The Citroen is a tarted up Legere 15 (Light 15) which was manufactured for nearly two decades. It looks like a ’51 or ’52 from the picture, but could be earlier. The grille was originally all chrome, NOT red, and the whitewalls are an attempt to cheer up an austere stock colour scheme, although the wheels were originally cream with chrome caps.
It was extraordinarily advanced for the time; front wheel drive, torsion bar suspension all around, unit-body construction etc. etc. I have a 1/8 scale kit of one sitting in my workshop semi-built; the kit is French, and no easier to assemble than the real thing.
I’ve always found french vehicles to be an interesting combination of excellent engineering and crappy construction.
30-cm ingot is soo yesterday and not impressive. ITRS calling for a 450 mm wafer between 2011 and 2016. A 450mm ingot, that would be impressive. http://www.reed-electronics.com/semiconductor/article/CA420740
At the 2000 IEDM in DC I remember Intel presenting 450 mm wafer road map. I thought it unlikely then and still think it unlikely in the future, given the time, difficulty and money it took the industry to go to 300mm. Vendors are reluctant to invest in equipment redesigns to make it happen. Just think of the difficulty controlling the across wafer process uniformity for all the various process steps. However, never say never. Given enough money and resources it can happen. I just wonder if 450 mm process development can be economically viable. A typical 300mm fab already cost ~4billion.