IBM cuts E-beam ASIC fab in sub-micron, CMOS shift

Electronic News, Oct 26, 1992 by Peter Dunn

EAST FISHKILL, N.Y.--IBM, as part of a significant reordering of its semiconductor production efforts, is sharply cutting its use of direct-write electron-beam lithography for production of low-volume application specific ICs.

The shift may mark the beginning of the final act for IBM's E-beam IC fabrication program, an innovative effort that saw the computer giant design its own lithography tools for production by Grumman. Sources said that many of the approximately 50 E-beam systems have been shut down, and a few employees reassigned to other areas or offered early retirement.

"We're not discontinuing E-beam efforts, but we are slowing down," said an IBM spokesman. "As we make the transition from bipolar to CMOS technology, and our number of part numbers decreases, it makes sense to slow down."

Observers said last week the EL series lithography tools have been used to "personalize" layers of ASIC devices destined for IBM's high-end computers. Other layers are produced on optical wafer steppers, in a "mix-and-match" situation. As circuit features have shrunk below 1 micron, even the latest EL-3 E-beam machines have been hardpressed to keep up with modern optical tools, and the economies of E-beam for low-volume production are apparently no longer realizable, so more of the personalizing work will be done with optical lithograpahy.

The IBM spokesman said he did not know whether IBM is working on a successor to the EL-3. Two years ago, IBM helped establish Etec Systems of Hayward, Calif., which took over the former Perkin-Elmer E-beam division and was to be the recipient of certain IBM proprietary technology (EN, April 2, 1990).

Electron-beam technology is still alive and well at IBM's photomask shop in Burlington, Vt., which is beginning to offer its products in the open market for the first time (see related story on this page).

The move away from E-beam IC production comes at a time when all of IBM's semiconductor operations are being reviewed and reorganized. The company's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, N.Y., will no longer have a wafer fabrication facility; many of the research engineers and technicians there are being reassigned to Fishkill, where all semiconductor development work is being consolidated. The consolidation has also seen the transfer of 20 or so employees from Burlington, Vt., to Fishkill.

IBM's cadre of IC production engineers has been steeply reduced through early retirement incentive programs; this has created a windfall of available knowledge workers for other companies.

"There are a lot of very well-trained, very smart, intellectually motivated product people out there," commented Duncan Brown, vice president and general manager of Advanced Technology Materials Inc., a Danbury, Ct., producer of diamond and silicon carbide thin-film materials. ATM expects to hire a number of former IBM technologists, as do many other firms in areas such as photomask production and electron beam equipment.