Special Section on the 2014 SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference

The big picture for the semiconductor industry shows slowing but still positive sales growth, a push back of the transition to 450 mm wafers to perhaps the next decade, and potential commercial implementation of EUV for some layers of some sub-10 nm nodes by 2019–2020.^1–3 Per Gartner, current revenue growth is driven by smartphones, solid-state drives, and DRAM.¹ A new semiconductor sector, wearables (smartwatches, smart glasses, Bluetooth headsets, etc.) is also driving some revenue growth but on a smaller scale. Critical to this revenue growth is the ability to deliver ever more powerful semiconductor technologies at a competitive cost.