Earlier this month, Intel’s Mark Bohr dropped a pair of significant announcements on the semiconductor world in general — and neither is great news for proponents of more advanced semiconductor manufacturing methods like Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV). According to Bohr, Intel has developed a roadmap for pushing to 7nm — and it won’t need EUV to get there.

Now, that might sound like good news, and it is from a certain point of view — but it also implies that EUV is slipping off the 10nm roadmap and that 7nm is in doubt. In an interview with Semiconductor Engineering, when asked about the use of EUV at 10nm and 7nm, Bohr said:

“… We would like to have EUV for 7nm, but I can’t really count on that. So we are also exploring the option of a non-EUV version of 7nm. It looks doable. At this very early stage, we can achieve better density and lower cost. But if I had EUV, I could do a much better job. So we are still looking at and exploring EUV for 7nm, but we are not absolutely counting on it for 7nm.”

This echoes statements and predictions we’ve heard before about the current state of EUV, but it’s a distinctly less rosy take on the situation than what ASML was promoting this month. In recently released remarks, the company stated that it has multiple customers qualifying EUV on 10nm. Earlier this summer, IBM released a statement claiming that it had sustained an EUV light source for long enough to run nearly 700 wafers — though it must be noted that the company didn’t actually etch or produce anything — it literally just ran the wafers through the machine.

Here’s the central problem and controversy surrounding EUV. Everyone agrees that existing ArF laser (argon fluoride) immersion lithography will only reach smaller process nodes through an increasingly difficult manufacturing process that increases costs and makes it impossible, in the long term, to push below a certain node. Even Bohr’s comments about hitting 7nm don’t change that — in fact, he openly admits that whether 7nm works without EUV or not, getting below that point is going to be extremely difficult.

Given that both Intel and TSMC invested a significant amount of money into ASML several years ago, it’s notable that Intel is now singing a different tune from its partner. Not that Intel is giving up on EUV — in fact, Bohr makes clear that it’s still the only game in town — but that the company is nonetheless continuing to investigate alternate scaling methods precisely because it’s no longer considered a sure thing that EUV will ramp up and be ready for prime time by any particular date. Bohr revealed that Intel is already using triple patterning for certain critical layers at 14nm — by the time it hits 7nm, quad patterning will have become a necessity at multiple layers (assuming EUV isn’t online by then). Double patterning is already common at 20nm.

Foundry partners, new interconnects

Two other topics discussed this month also worth touching on were Intel’s foundry plans and its early concept for a new interconnect system that doesn’t rely on through-silicon vias (TSVs). Today, planar chip stacks are connected in 2.5D processes. Instead, it would use a flip chip method and bump interconnects to link dies within a package. The company claims this allows for less wasted space, lower costs, and potentially higher densities.

The other major unveil is that Intel’s foundry division is working with six customers now — and is in the process of creating an IP catalog that would give customers a more comprehensive set of choices when they partner with the company. This is significantly different from Intel’s standard MO; the company has historically settled on a single set of choices or decisions about which tools and technologies it will deploy at a given node, then used them. Industry analysts have speculated that part of Chipzilla’s transition to foundry manufacturing would be ramping a broader array of choices to give customers options, and that process appears to be underway.

To date, Intel’s general strategy — work with specific, particular customers who can benefit from its expertise and are willing to pay for it — appears unchanged. The company’s work to broaden its chip tools is one way it can simultaneously increase its potential customer base, but to date Intel has shown no interest in jumping into the general foundry business like TSMC or GlobalFoundries.

According to Intel, its ability to scale downwards aggressively at new nodes remains a key selling point for its customers, and will enable it to expand business further — but the company isn’t telegraphing which new companies it expects to work with or when it will announce new business deals.

Next page: What are Intel’s (or anyone’s) chances of actually scaling to 7nm and beyond?