Jan 12 2009
SEMI today announced the recipients of the 2008 SEMI Award for North America and the association's highest honor for technical contribution to the semiconductor industry -- the Lifetime Achievement Award. The SEMI Award for 2008 will be presented to the Intel Logic Technology Development Group and the SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award will be conferred upon Dr. Yoshio Nishi, a professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. The industry honors will be presented during a reception at the Industry Strategy Symposium in Half Moon Bay, California on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.
"Our industry honors Dr. Nishi and the Intel Logic Technology Development Group for their outstanding contributions to the semiconductor manufacturing industry," said Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. "We are pleased to recognize Dr. Nishi for almost five decades of technical and collaborative contributions to semiconductor manufacturing; and the Logic Technology Development Group at Intel for the development of 90 nm technology, which was subsequently deployed industry-wide."
2008 SEMI Award for North America:
Between 1999 and 2003, the Intel Logic Technology Development Group as well as engineers from other groups at the company, developed and implemented into high-volume production for 90 nm CMOS, a suite of uniaxial strain techniques, which were responsible for dramatically increasing the carrier mobility and drive currents of both p-MOS and n-MOS transistors. The integration of a unique embedded SiGe source-drain structure for p-channel and integration of an overall Si3N4 capping layer provided uniaxial channel strain of the correct polarity for p and n channel transistors, enhancing and extending the original earlier work pioneered at Stanford and MIT. This successful 90 nm technology provided a working example that was widely adapted and implemented throughout the IC industry.
Team award recipients include:
- Mark Bohr -- Intel senior fellow and director of Process Architecture and Integration
- Scott Thompson -- former 90 nm program manager
- Robert Chau -- Intel senior fellow and director of Transistor Research and Nanotechnology
- Kaizad Mistry -- vice president of the Intel Technology and Manufacturing Group
- Tahir Ghani -- Intel fellow and director of Transistor Technology and Integration
- Anand Murthy -- Thin Film group leader
- Chris Auth -- Transistor Integration group leader
The SEMI Award for North America has been presented annually since 1979 to honor individuals and teams who have made significant technical contributions to the semiconductor industry. Nominations are accepted from individuals of North American-based member companies of SEMI. Past award recipients include Walter Benzing and Mike McNealy, Ken Levy, Jean Hoerni, Dan Maydan, Robert Akins and Igor Khandros, among others.
SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Yoshio Nishi has a career spanning more than 45 years, and has held leadership positions with industry giants Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments. He is currently a professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University.
Dr. Nishi has made numerous contributions and successes during his career, which have had pervasive impact on the industry as a whole. During his two decades at Toshiba, Dr. Nishi developed the revolutionary pre-competitive partnership concept, allowing the semiconductor industry to share risk and cost. He also headed up the development team responsible for the world's first mass-produced 1-Mbit CMOS DRAM and 256K CMOS SRAM. Those advances helped facilitate the global shift in VLSI technology from nMOS to CMOS.
Dr. Nishi left Toshiba to lead the high-performance CMOS team at Hewlett-Packard that developed 0.8 and 0.5 micron technologies. These new technologies enabled the company to commercialize the world's fastest CMOS RISC machines.
Now at Stanford University, Dr. Nishi has established a strong research program that combines strong interaction between industry and academia. He is conducting research on gate stack materials and non conventional memory technologies.
Dr. Nishi is a fellow in the IEEE, and has received numerous honors and awards throughout his career including the 1995 IEEE Jack Morton Award and the 2002 IEEE Robert Noyce Medal. He has published more than 200 papers, and has co-authored/edited 12 books. In addition, he holds more than 70 patents in the US and Japan.
The SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed by SEMI, to honor individuals who have made numerous contributions to the advancement of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. It was first presented in 1994. Past recipients include Jim Koford, Richard Spanier, Bruce Deal, Peter Rose, Ken Levy, Dan Maydan, David K. Wang, Sasson Somekh, and Bernie Meyerson.