IC manufacturing options to break the cost/performance bottleneck

Summary form only given, as follows. With the IC industry projected to grow to $273 billion by the year 2000 and worldwide electronic production to $1 trillion in the same period, the author discusses the macroeconomics and demographic trends that will sustain this growth. Applications, opportunity drivers and production are all discussed, by region. The Semiconductor Industry Association's National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor forecasts 1 GHz 14 cm/sup 2/ chips by the year 2010; part of burden in meeting the cost/performance challenges to keep the industry on this roadmap falls on the IC back-end interconnection. The increased complexity supporting enhanced performance of the these IC's comes from additional wiring levels, greater interconnect density and the total interconnect length. The author explores these complexity issues and the economic trade-off between performance and functionality.