The lithography tool operates with 65,000 independently controlled parallel beams which delivers capabilities at a scale no electron beam technology can match, said the company.
Installed at Northrup Grumann, it addresses the holy grail of chip design, said founder and CEO, Lex Keen. During the system characterisation of the direct write, maskless system, SecureFoundry demonstrated it was able to pattern a 100mm wafer in just 15 minutes, he said.
“The HBA tool enables wafer-scale integration, advanced fan-out packaging, and multiple design variations in a single run,” he continued. For rapid prototyping and die-level traceability, it allows AI chip designers to experiment with slight design variations across a single wafer, enabling exploration of ‘AI personalities’ and rapid feedback on performance outcomes”.
Its current process node is 22nm with zero field size limitations. A 300mm wafer can be completed as a single chip without shielding and as a monolithic structure, Keen told Electronics Weekly at Semicon West. Intended for low to medium volume production fab use, the tool can cut the cost of R&D and commercialisation of IP.
Moving to more advanced nodes will depend on if the Chips Act office wants to get involved, said Keen, referring to how he believes the original intent of the US Chips Act finance has shifted. “I think there is now an appetite for innovation to change why [companies] went overseas. . . The original intent was to change the economics, to lower the barrier to entry, such as mask costs, to speed up innovation,” he said. The last administration allocated funding to high volume fabs, like Intel and Samsung. This got headlines but he said that there is a move away from subsidies for large companies and back to the original intent to grow innovation with grants to smaller companies.
SEMI forecasts $1tn semiconductor market by 2030
