Modern chip manufacturing happens in factories that cost upward
of $18 billion each to build and requires hundreds of separate
steps. Ensuring that chips come off the factory line without
mistakes in features that are only a few nanometers wide is
critical to the ability of companies like Intel Corp, Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to
turn a profit.
The new Applied tools are aimed at inspecting those chips at
various times during the manufacturing process. A new optical
scanner - essentially an extremely advanced camera that Applied
calls Enlight - scans a silicon wafer quickly for problem areas
over about 15 minutes, and then an electron microscope zooms in
for a closer look.
The problem Applied aimed to solve with AI is that electron
microscopes are accurate but slow. An initial optical scan might
find a million possible problem areas on a silicon wafer, and it
would take an electron microscope days to examine each of those
areas - and much of that time would go to waste, because only a
fraction of the problem areas are what chip industry veterans
call "killer" defects that would cause the chip to malfunction.
The new artificial intelligence technology, which Applied calls
ExtractAI, only needs to check about 1,000 of those possible
trouble spots with the electron microscope to predict where the
biggest problems will be. Keith Wells, group vice president and
general manager for imaging and process control at Applied, said
the AI-powered check only takes about an hour.
"It's economical for the customer to do that on every wafer,"
Wells said in an interview. "We're telling you with high
confidence that these are the really killer defects."
Applied has been testing the system with customers since last
year and said it has generated more than $400 million in revenue
so far.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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