Intel Selects Nikon for 32nm Chips
Thanks to Alberto on dpReview for pointing this out:
…At 32-nm, Nikon has reportedly won the entire lithography business within Intel, leaving ASML out in the cold, source said. The multi-million-dollar order represents Intel’s initial scanners, based on immersion lithography. Up until now, Intel had been using ”dry” scanners for wafer processing within its fabs.
At 45-nm, Intel has been using a combination of 193-nm dry tools from both ASML and Nikon for the so-called ”critical layers,” sources said. For the non-critical layers, Intel has been exclusively using Nikon’s 248-nm scanners for use in processing wafers at the 45-nm node, sources said….
I’m not a hardware guy, so I can’t speak with any authority, but from what I understand- the features on chips below 45nm are really hard to get right with the typical lithography where the image is projected through gases onto the chip. So they’re moving to projecting the image into liquid which modifies how the light hits the chip and makes it much more likely to get decent yields.
The article says that cost was a major deciding factor in favor of Nikon over ASML.
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