Semiconductor manufacturing-the past and the future

Summary form only given. It is noted that the trends dominating the semiconductor industry show no signs of diminishing. Lithography dimensions continue to decrease and chip sizes continue to increase, resulting in functional density increases that predict 50-100 million transistors per chip in the 1990s. The sophistication of clean-room environment controls and process equipment specifications are rapidly escalating the cost of entering the manufacturing business. With this backdrop, it is significant that the selling price for today´s complicated circuits, such as 1-Mb DRAMs, is almost identical to that of the initial 1K DRAMs produced in the early 1970s. The author examines whether this trend will continue, and what requirements will be placed on materials suppliers, the equipment manufacturers, and VLSI producers