Current semiconductor process technologies in vogue are CMOS and Gallium Arsenide. Next generation technologies being talked about are SiGe, SOI, Copper, low-k dielectrics and compound semiconductors. How are these technologies going to influence the semiconductor industry from a chip design perspective? How will they bring changes from a customer and supplier perspective? Will any of these become mainstream in the next 10 years?
I see silicon still being the dominant technology for the foreseeable future. The process technologies that you mention are still only part of the entire technology integration, with specific uses like decreasing resistance, leakage control, and so on. The technology has traditionally been described by the underlying substrate. This substrate has, for long, been silicon, simply because silicon dioxide is by nature the stablest of materials, which has led to economically favorable process technologies. You also have to contend with the lack of friendliness in the other substrates when it comes to process, and these substrates thus have never moved beyond niche uses. From a mainstream point of view, I think silicon will be the leader for some time to come. In fact, one of my first projects in the U.S., back in 1977, was to develop silicon germanium epitaxial layers, and the technology has been around for a long time. The very fact that it hasn’t seen wider mainstream application in more than two decades speaks for its limited success.
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