High levels of IC manufacturability: one of the necessary prerequisites of the 1997 SIA Roadmap vision

The SIA Roadmaps promote aggressive decrease in minimum feature size, which is likely to result in a severe contradiction between acceptable die cost and achievable manufacturing cost. In this paper such a contradiction is discussed in detail along with its likely negative consequences. Efficient Design for Manufacturability is indicated as one of a few remedies, which may help the IC industry in relaxing the implications of the cost contradiction, generated by the SIA Roadmaps.