Intel says EUV is hard but ready

In an interview with EE Times, Britt Turkot, Intel director of EUV, explained the chip giant is now running EUV in volume for technology development. She said extreme ultraviolet lithography is ready, but admitted that Intel engineers are still struggling to use EUV to make cutting-edge chips in high volume.

Britt Turkot, a fellow and director of EUV at Intel, said that the room-sized systems are running in its giant Portland, Oregon, fab. She would not say how or if EUV will be used for the company’s 10-nm products ramping now or its planned 7-nm node.

Intel was among the semiconductor companies that helped pioneer the technology more than two decades ago but is among the last to confirm its use. Last year, rivals Samsung and TSMC separately announced that they were ramping 7-nm nodes using EUV systems to print their finest features.

The site also heard from two sources that TSMC's N7+ process uses EUV for just four layers, meaning the Taiwanese foundry still uses double patterning with traditional immersion lithography for the other layers. TSMC declined to get into the details but confirmed it's using double patterning in many layers, and said this was a decision based on EUV's cost and maturity versus immersion lithography.