Manufacturing gigachips in the year 2005

10 years from now, we envision producing gigachips for an ever expanding electronics market at a cost per function that continues to decrease by approximately 25%/year. To meet this challenge, we must continue to pursue advanced concepts in factories and equipment that are synergistic with continuous/synchronous manufacturing. In particular, such opportunities include: larger wafers, single-wafer processing, clustering/multiprocessing, real-time process/factory control, integrated minienvironments, and standards-based modular design. In most cases, the development and implementation of such change will require new levels of cooperation among suppliers, customers, and competitors in the semiconductor industry.