Intel Corp has kept very quiet while Motorola Inc and IBM Corp have been arguing about which was furthest advanced with copper interconnect technology. Last week, EE Times got Intel to admit that is currently taking a wait and see approach to copper. Copper interconnect technology doesn’t improve the performance of our high-end microprocessors at this time, Intel told the paper. Intel’s chairman emeritus, Gordon Moore, the author of the famous Moore’s Law of semiconductor performance, is also not convinced about the need to rush into producing copper enabled chips. Copper is a little bit better as a conductor. It has 50% higher conductivity if you can get the bulk properties on top of it but it’s not [by a] factor of two orders of magnitude, he has said. Copper is more difficult to process, and the first semiconductor manufacturing equipment that can produce it, from companies such as Novellus Systems Inc and Applied Materials Inc, has surprised many with its extremely high price tags. Intel is currently putting most of its efforts into alternative design techniques that use more transistors and less interconnect. Ultimately, Intel is expected to produce its own chips with copper interconnects, however, and it is currently anticipating the introduction of its first true copper technology in around 2001 or 2001, to coincide with its introduction of 0.13 micron technology. Meanwhile, Motorola and its new partner, Intel compatible chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc, have said they expect to introduce their first copper products in 0.15 micron technology by 2000, and say that copper is the method by which they intend to crank up the clock speeds of their high-end processors up to 1GHz. IBM will be first to market, promising its first copper PowerPC parts at 0.2 micron, with 0.16 micron parts in preparation. Intel is likely to produce its first 700MHz part, a version of its Xeon chip using its 0.18 micron process, some time towards the end of next year.
