Philosophy & Scope
1998 Advanced Research Workshop
Future Trends in Microelectronics:
Off the Beaten Path
June 1-5, 1998 Ile des Embiez, France

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Philosophy
Ever since the invention of
the transistor and especially
after the advent of integrated circuits, semiconductor devices have kept
expanding their role in our life. For better or worse our civilization
is destined to be based on semiconductors. Transistor circuits entertain
us and keep track of our money, they fight our wars and decipher the secret
codes of life, and one day, perhaps, they will relieve us from the burden
of thinking and making responsible decisions. Inasmuch as that day has
not yet arrived, we have to fend for ourselves. The key to success is a
clear vision of where are we heading in these turbulent times.
The celebrated Si technology
has known a virtually one-dimensional
path of development: reducing the minimal size of lithographic features.
From economic viewpoint, there is a widespread fear that this path has
taken us to the point of diminishing return. This fear results in reduced
investments in hardware technology and even R&D in favor of dramatically
increased interest in software and circuit design within existing technologies.
There is certainly no shortage
of opinion about what is going
on in our profession. Some, haunted by the specter of steel industry, believe
that the semiconductor microelectronics industry has matured and the research
game is over. Others believe the progress in hardware technology will be
roaring back, based on innovative research. A free-spirited debate of these
questions between the leading professionals in the Industry, Government,
and Academia is the main purpose of the planned Workshop. Identifying the
scenario for the future evolution of microelectronics will present a tremendous
opportunity for constructive action today.
New electronic materials,
most powerful enabler of new technologies, will be a central theme
in the program. We have an impressive line-up of world's foremost materialists
from a broad span of fields (e.g. MBE, polymer, self-organized and composite
materials, ion-implantation, photonic bandgap...). Differentiating
from usual materials meetings, our ARW will discuss material's prospects
and fundamentals in the context of future technologies. In the context
of more traditional view of electronic materials, we plan to debate their
fundamental role in the development of Microelectronics. This debate may
be seeded by the following "provocative" statement (S. M. Sze,
High-Speed Semiconductor Devices, Wiley Interscience, 1990):
The evolution of semiconductor electronics has
always been intimately connected with advances in material science and
technology. The first revolution in electronics, which replaced vacuum
tubes with transistors, was based upon doped semiconductors and relied
on newly discovered methods of growing pure crystals. Prior to 1950's,
semiconductors could not be properly termed ``doped'' - they were dirty.
Today, semiconductors routinely used in devices are cleaner (in terms of
the concentration of undesired foreign particles) than the vacuum of vacuum
tubes. Subsequent evolution of transistor electronics has been associated
with the progress in two areas: (1)miniaturization of device design rules,
brought about by advances in the lithographic resolution and doping by
ion implantation, and (2) development of techniques for layered-crystal
growth and selective doping, culminating in such technologies as MBE and
MOCVD, that are capable of monolayer resolution of doping and chemical
composition. Of these two areas, the first has definitely had a greater
impact in the commercial arena, whereas the second has been mainly setting
the stage for the exploration of device physics. These roles may well be
reversed in the future. Development of new and exotic lithographic techniques
with a nanometer resolution will be setting the stage for the exploration
of various physical effects in mesoscopic devices, while epitaxially grown
devices (especially heterojunction transistors integrated with optoelectronic
elements) will be gaining commercial ground. When (and whether) this role
reversal will take place, will be determined perhaps as much by economic
as by technical factors. It is anticipated that the lateral miniaturization
progress may face diminishing returns when the speeds of integrated circuits
and the device packing densities will be limited primarily by the delays
and power dissipation in the interconnection rather than individual transistors.
Further progress may then require circuit operation at cryogenic temperatures
and/or heavy reliance on optical interconnections. Implementation of the
latter within the context of silicon VLSI requires hybrid-material systems
with heteroepitaxial islands of foreign crystals grown on Si substrates.
All these anticipated developments
are likely to be heavily dependent on the progress of material science
and techniques for epitaxial growth of semiconductor layers. However muddy
our crystal ball may be regarding the future trends in microelectronics,
one trend appears to be clear: the device designer of tomorrow will be
thinking in terms of multilayer structures defined on an atomic scale.

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Scope and Topics for
Discussion
- What is the technical limit to
shrinking devices? Is there an economic sense in pursuing this limit? In
the memory market? In the microprocessor market?
- What kind of research does the
silicon industry need to continue its expansion? Integrated systems?
- What is the technical limit to
shrinking devices? Is there an economic sense in pursuing this limit? In
the memory market? In the microprocessor market?
- What kind of research does the
silicon industry need to continue its expansion? Integrated systems?
- What are the anticipated trends
in lithography? 13nm EUV and beyond? Limits? Modeling? Materials? Throughputs?
Or, it's time to go for non-lithography?
- The wiring challenge. Beyond the
one-shot solution Cu? Optical or superconductor wiring?
- Will wide-area electronics be integrated
with VLSI?
- What are the limits to thin film
transistors?
- Do we need three-dimensional integration?
SOI?
- What are the prospects and constraints
of universal wafer bonding?
- To what extent can we trade high
speed for low power? Is adiabatic computing in the cards? Ultra-low power
electronics, a matter of scaling ?
- What is happening in the evolution
(or revolution?) of systems and architectures ?
- Optical interconnects; and hopeful
impetus to architecture revolution ?
- Where are the big stake market
pulls and pushes for new semiconductor technologies? 3D displays? Human-machine
interfaces?
- Nanoelectronics. Where is it heading?
We can make quantum-effect devices; can we make them broadly useful? Can
we get around problems like critical-biasing? wiring? stochastic fluctuations?
large scale integration? Resonant Tunneling, Single Electronics?
- An architecture revolution (or
a second von Neumann) required?
- Is quantum computing more than
just a mathematical exercise ? Can we have or do we need long-range coherence?
Quantum cellular automata?
- Non-lithographic fabrication. Promising
alternatives? Broadened horizon? or hopeless pursuits?
- How to answer the DARPA call for
"trillion transistors on a chip"? Challenges and/or fundamental
problems? Single-electronics?
- Telecom. Photonic networking, the
obvious solution? Zero switching network? Are PDH, SDH, and ATM fundamentally
flawed and limited?
- LEO satellite network and satellite-on-wafer,
a new cause for rethinking of the fiber-optics system ?
- Telecom and computer convergence,
implications? network computers? New pushes for speed and bandwidth from
3D TV, digital photography, and virtual reality ?
- Plastic fibers, and tipping the
balance of GaAs vs. InP?
- Are there green pastures beyond
the semiconductor technologies? What can we expect from combinations with
superconducting circuits? Molecular devices? Plastic transistors and polymer
optoelectronics ? Can we hope for bioelectronics with self-produced designed
cells? Any prospect for DNA computing? DNA assisted self assembling and
packaging?
- Biotech and microelectronics chips
combination? Chip-in-brain, doable but unacceptable?
- Is there a need for (possibility
of) integrating compound semiconductor IC's into Si VLSI? What are the
merits and prospects of hybrid schemes, such as heteroepitaxy, wafer bonding
and packaging?
- What are the most attractive system
applications of optoelectronic hybrids? Camcorders? LED-CMOS or LCD-CMOS
Projection TVs? Large-area imagers and printers?
- What are the possible implications
of opto-electro-microwave interactions?
- Satellite-on-wafer, radar-on-chip,
feasible? desired? minor distraction or big stake?
- What can we expect from photonic
bandgap structures? Is "Photonic Computer" still a realistic
hope or just a dismissible fantasy? Could or should "photonics replacing
electronics" ever happen?
- Progress in widegap semiconductor
technologies, electronic and photonic. What is happening in narrow gap
semiconductors? What are the current status and prospects of cooling technologies.
Are intersubband devices a viable alternative? What are the potential applications
of the unipolar laser?
- What are current problems and ultimate
goals in optical disk memories? Automotive electronics? Potential market?
- Changed roles of industrial, government
and academic researchers.

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