[MAC] Motorola announces 0.13-micron fabrication process

[Jesus Cea Avion]

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0104/10.mot.shtml

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Motorola announces 0.13-micron fabrication process
                 by David Read,
                 April 10, 2001, 7:00 am ET 

                 Yesterday, Motorola announced its new HiPerMOS7 (Seventh
                 Generation High Performance Metal Oxide Semiconductor -- called
                 HiP7) manufacturing process that will allow future processors from
                 Motorola, including the next PowerPCs, to run faster, use less
                 power, generate less heat and be less expensive than ever before.
                 This new fabrication process will be the first to use 0.13-micron
                 lithography and SOI (Silicon on Insulator) technology along with
                 copper interconnects. 

                 "With HiPerMOS7, Motorola has tried to implement parallel design
                 efforts with all of Motorola's future microprocessors," said Suresh
                 Venkatesan, Motorola's HiP7 Process Technology Manager. "Initial
                 products using SOI and HiP7 will address the embedded and
                 infrastructure markets, with Motorola's PowerPC microprocessors
                 adopting these technologies early next year." Motorola hopes that the
                 smaller size of a processor manufactured with the new process will
                 allow its embedded processors to drop significantly in price and
                 increase in functionality. Venkatesan stresses that HiP7 will migrate
                 to the PowerPC portfolio. 

                 Currently, Motorola uses a 0.18-micron lithography process to
                 manufacture Motorola 7450s, the G4s currently used in Apple's
                 highest end systems. By moving to a far smaller 0.13-micron
                 lithography process, Motorola's new processors will be able to use
                 less energy per transistor, and have more transistors per processor.
                 "Speed and dynamic power consumption are a function of voltage
                 and frequency," said Venkatesan. "All things remaining equal, a
                 processor manufactured using the 0.13-micron fabrication process
                 could see a 50 percent power savings over a similar processor made
                 using a 0.18-micron fabrication process." 

                 That's not all. Because of the lowered power consumption of
                 processors manufactured with the new process, it will be possible for
                 Motorola to ramp up its processor's frequencies. This, coupled with
                 Motorola's SOI technology which allows individual transistors to
                 operate more quickly and efficiently, should allow Motorola to reach
                 the goals that it outlined at last summer's Microprocessor Forum for
                 its GHz+ G4 Apollo. 

                 Mike Mendacino, Motorola's SOI Technology Manager, said that
                 future PowerPC processors created using the 0.13-micron
                 manufacturing process could have larger on-die L2 caches. "With
                 more transistors on a given area, one could logically conclude that
                 we could add more cache if the processor's performance and price
                 worked out in a larger cache's favor," said Mendacino. He also
                 suggested that, given Motorola's history, a larger on-die cache is a
                 logical progression in the PowerPC's development. 

                 Venkatesan also said that Motorola is skipping the 0.15-micron
                 manufacturing process. This may result in Motorola leapfrogging
                 their semiconductor competitors, many of whom have recently
                 begun shipping processor products using a 0.15-micron lithography
                 process -- Nvidia's GeForce3 being a high-profile example.
                 Nevertheless, other major semiconductor manufacturers have
                 announced their own twist of a 0.13-micron manufacturing process.
                 For example, rival processor manufacturer Intel last week
                 announced that it had successfully manufactured its first .13-micron
                 processors on a larger wafer. 

                 Motorola is currently sampling embedded processors fabricated
                 using the 0.13-micron process, which it intends to begin shipping in
                 volume in the second quarter of this year. Motorola also will be
                 showing off its new technology at the Embedded systems
                 conference this week in San Francisco. 

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