Applied Materials Ships 5,000th Producer Platform
- Virtually every computer chip in the world is now made using the Producer® platform
- 1.9 billion square meters of silicon processed by the Producer platform since its launch 20 years ago
- Today’s Producer platform can be specially configured to address growing Moore’s Law challenges
SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 02, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Applied Materials today celebrated the 20th anniversary and 5,000th shipment of the ® platform, a manufacturing system that helps make virtually every chip in the world.
The Producer platform was launched in July of 1998 to help enable chips to run faster by changing their wiring from aluminum to copper, which is a better conductor. The transition was needed by the industry to drive the performance and power improvements associated with Moore’s Law, but it also required many additional steps that could have made the progress unaffordable. To help, Applied Materials designed every element of the Producer platform to give customers the highest performance at the lowest possible operating cost.
As a result, the Producer platform became an industry workhorse that has since taken on more tasks to help drive Moore’s Law and enable mass adoption of electronic products including notebook PCs, smartphones and wearable electronics.
“With the landmark Producer platform, Applied achieved something that had never been done before on this scale: create a highly flexible architecture that can support multiple technology generations and still remain incredibly productive,” said G. Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSIresearch. “Today, the Producer platform continues to allow chipmakers to imagine and build chips in entirely new ways. Congratulations to Applied Materials on this impressive milestone for one of the most important process systems in the semiconductor industry.”
Integrated Process Platform
The Producer platform was originally conceived as a single process system focused on chemical vapor deposition, and it became an industry benchmark. Over the years, Applied expanded the capabilities of the platform to include etch, selective removal and treatment technologies. Today, more materials are reaching the physical limits of classic Moore’s Law scaling. In response, Applied is pioneering development of new materials beyond the periodic table that are more difficult to use but enable continued improvements in chip performance and power efficiency. The Producer platform is rising to the challenge as it can now be used as an integrated process platform, offering various combinations of deposition and treatment, deposition and etch, or deposition and selective removal, in the same system and under vacuum.
Producer by the Numbers
- 10 technology nodes supported to date, from 180nm to 5nm
- 20 years enabling industry inflections including copper, strain engineering, high-k metal gate, FinFETs and 3D NAND
- 1.9 billion square meters of silicon processed by the Producer platform – an area equivalent to 30 times the size of Manhattan
Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT) is the leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. Our expertise in modifying materials at atomic levels and on an industrial scale enables customers to transform possibilities into reality. At Applied Materials, our innovations make possible the technology shaping the future. Learn more at .
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