The 90 nm process refers to the level of MOSFET ( CMOS)

fabrication process Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...

technology that was commercialized by the 2003–2005 timeframe, by leading semiconductor companies like

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

, IBM,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

, Fujitsu,

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world' ...

, Elpida,

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

Infineon Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the former parent company Siemens AG were spun off. Infineon has about 50,280 employees and is one of the ten largest semicond ...

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

and Micron Technology. The origin of the 90 nm value is historical, it reflects a trend of 70% scaling every 2–3 years. The naming is formally determined by the

International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) is a set of documents produced by a group of semiconductor industry experts. These experts are representative of the sponsoring organisations which include the Semiconductor Industry A ...

(ITRS). The 193 nm wavelength was introduced by many (but not all) companies for

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

of critical layers mainly during the 90 nm node. Yield issues associated with this transition (due to the use of new

photoresist A photoresist (also known simply as a resist) is a light-sensitive material used in several processes, such as photolithography and photoengraving, to form a patterned coating on a surface. This process is crucial in the electronic industry. ...

s) were reflected in the high costs associated with this transition. Even more significantly, the 300 mm wafer size became mainstream at the 90 nm node. The previous wafer size was 200 mm diameter.

History

A 90nm

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

MOSFET was fabricated by Iranian engineer Ghavam Shahidi (later IBM director) with D.A. Antoniadis and H.I. Smith at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1988. The device was fabricated using X-ray lithography. Toshiba, Sony and Samsung developed a 90nm process during 20012002, before being introduced in 2002 for Toshiba's eDRAM and Samsung's 2 Gb

NAND flash Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...

memory. IBM demonstrated a 90nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS process, with development led by Ghavam Shahidi, in 2002. The same year, Intel demonstrated a 90nm strained-silicon process. Fujitsu commercially introduced its 90nm process in 200365nm CMOS Process Technology
/ref> followed by TSMC in 2004. Gurtej Singh Sandhu of Micron Technology initiated the development of atomic layer deposition high-k films for DRAM memory devices. This helped drive cost-effective implementation of semiconductor memory, starting with 90nm

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics * Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines ...

DRAM.

Example: Elpida 90 nm DDR2 SDRAM process

Elpida Memory Micron Memory Japan, K.K. is a Japanese subsidiary of Micron Technology. It was formerly known as established in 1999 that developed, designed, manufactured and sold dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) products. It was also a semiconductor fou ...

's 90 nm DDR2 SDRAM process. * Use of 300 mm wafer size * Use of KrF (248 nm) lithography with

optical proximity correction Optical proximity correction (OPC) is a photolithography enhancement technique commonly used to compensate for image errors due to diffraction or process effects. The need for OPC is seen mainly in the making of semiconductor devices and is due to ...

* 512 Mbit * 1.8 V operation * Derivative of earlier 110 nm and 100 nm processes

Processors using 90 nm process technology

* Sony/Toshiba EE+ GS ( PlayStation 2) - 2003 * Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell Processor - 2005 * IBM PowerPC G5 970FX - 2004 * IBM PowerPC G5 970MP - 2005 * IBM PowerPC G5 970GX - 2005 * IBM "Waternoose" Xbox 360 Processor - 2005 * Intel

Pentium 4 Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. The production of Netburst processors was active from 200 ...

Prescott - 2004-02 * Intel

Celeron Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers. Celeron processors are compatible with IA-32 software. They typically offer less performance per clock speed com ...

D Prescott-256 - 2004-05 * Intel

Pentium M The Pentium M is a family of mobile 32-bit single-core x86 microprocessors (with the modified Intel P6 microarchitecture) introduced in March 2003 and forming a part of the Intel Carmel notebook platform under the then new Centrino brand. The ...

Dothan - 2004-05 * Intel

M Dothan-1024 - 2004-08 * Intel

Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same a ...

Nocona, Irwindale, Cranford, Potomac, Paxville - 2004-06 * Intel

Pentium D Pentium D is a range of desktop 64-bit x86-64 processors based on the NetBurst microarchitecture, which is the dual-core variant of the Pentium 4 manufactured by Intel. Each CPU comprised two dies, each containing a single core, residing next to ...

Smithfield - 2005-05 * AMD Athlon 64 Winchester, Venice, San Diego, Orleans - 2004-10 * AMD

Athlon 64 X2 The Athlon 64 X2 is the first native dual-core desktop central processing unit (CPU) designed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It was designed from scratch as native dual-core by using an already multi-CPU enabled Athlon 64, joining it with ano ...

Manchester, Toledo, Windsor - 2005-05 * AMD

Sempron Sempron has been the marketing name used by AMD for several different budget desktop CPUs, using several different technologies and CPU socket formats. The Sempron replaced the AMD Duron processor and competed against Intel's Celeron series of pr ...

Palermo and Manila - 2004-08 * AMD

Turion 64 AMD Turion is the brand name AMD applies to its x86-64 low-power consumption (''mobile'') processors codenamed ''K8L''. The Turion 64 and Turion 64 X2/Ultra processors compete with Intel's mobile processors, initially the '' Pentium M'' and the I ...

Lancaster and Richmond - 2005-03 *

NVIDIA Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

GeForce GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, inte ...

8800 GTS (G80) - 2006 * AMD

Turion 64 X2 AMD Turion is the brand name AMD applies to its x86-64 low-power consumption (''mobile'') processors codenamed ''K8L''. The Turion 64 and Turion 64 X2/Ultra processors compete with Intel's mobile processors, initially the ''Pentium M'' and the I ...

Taylor and Trinidad - 2006-05 * AMD

Opteron Opteron is AMD's x86 former server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64 or AMD64). It was released on April 22, 2003, with the ''Sledg ...

Venus, Troy, and Athens - 2005-08 * AMD Dual-core

Denmark, Italy, Egypt, Santa Ana, and Santa Rosa *

VIA C7 The VIA C7 is an x86 central processing unit designed by Centaur Technology and sold by VIA Technologies. Product history The C7 delivers a number of improvements to the older VIA C3 cores but is nearly identical to the latest VIA C3 Nehemiah ...

- 2005-05 * Loongson (Godson) 2Е STLS2E02 - 2007-04 * Loongson (Godson) 2F STLS2F02 - 2008-07 *

MCST-4R The MCST R1000 (russian: МЦСТ R1000) is a 64-bit microprocessor developed by Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST) and fabricated by TSMC. During development this microprocessor was designated as MCST-4R. MCST R1000 Highlights *implement ...

- 2010-12 * Elbrus-2S+ - 2011-11

References

External links

PC World ReviewReview

ITworld International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...

AMDFujitsu
2004 introductions *00090 American inventions Iranian inventions {{nano-tech-stub

History

Example: Elpida 90 nm DDR2 SDRAM process

Processors using 90 nm process technology

See also

References

External links