Chipworks Investigates Motorola's First Copper Memory Chip.

OTTAWA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1999--

Chipworks Inc. an internationally recognized technical services company specializing in reverse engineering for the semiconductor and electronics market today announced that they have released a report describing the state-of-the-art interconnect technology found within the Motorola 8M SRAM copper chip.

"This device is designed to provide high performance in secondary cache and ATM switch, telecommunication, and other high speed memory applications and is fabricated in Motorola's high performance 0.15 microns silicon gate CMOS technology with copper interconnect" stated Julia Elvidge, Chipworks' director of marketing and sales.

According to Ms. Elvidge, "the Motorola copper device is an 8M-bit synchronous static RAM organized as 256K words by 36 bits. It is manufactured in 0.15 microns CMOS technology and incorporates four copper interconnect layers, a tungsten local interconnect layer, and one polysilicon layer. The CMOS 6-T memory cell is comprised of four n-channel and two p-channel transistors with shallow trench isolation (STI).

"What makes this chip so important is that it is the first copper memory chip available to the commercial market" stated Ms. Elvidge. Motorola is currently producing only two parts in copper, the 8M SRAM memory device and more recently the Power PC G4 processor. Motorola is presently experiencing difficulty shipping the required volumes of the new Power PC G4 for Apple Computers, which is likely attributed to problems with the copper process" said Ms. Elvidge.

"Bigger is not necessarily better in the semiconductor industry. Manufacturers are constantly in a race to produce smaller and faster devices as the market place demands smaller more portable end products" stated Ms. Elvidge. "Until the Motorola 8M SRAM, memory chips have been constructed using aluminum interconnect, however very narrow, thin, and long metal interconnect lines are becoming a limiting factor in high performance as well as high performance microprocessors. Copper is a better conductor of electricity therefore making it the natural successor to aluminum. Manufacturers have delayed using copper because of major manufacturing; including migration problems and difficulties in depositing and etching the metal" confirmed Ms. Elvidge.

About Chipworks Inc.

Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Chipworks is a technical services company that analyses the circuitry and physical composition of semiconductors chips and electronics systems for a wide range of applications in intellectual property licensing, patenting, competitive study, and reliability assurance. Chipworks' technical experts use sophisticated lab facilities and a rich library of in-house semiconductor data to conduct high value analyses of a wide selection of chip types. For additional Company information, Chipworks web site is at http://www.chipworks.com.

Chipworks was rece of Trade, as well as the Ontario Global Traders Award of Merit for Leadership.