On 24 July STMicroelectronics and IBM signed a cooperation agreement to develop jointly next generations of silicon chip technology. The agreement comes shortly before the termination of the Crolles 2 Alliance, at the end of 2007.
For Gérard Matheron, Director of the STMicroelectronics plant in Crolles, the agreement with IBM will give STMicroelectronics and the Crolles facility new international stature.


Gérard Matheron, Director of the STMicroelectronics facility in Crolles

Does the agreement between ST and IBM mean the Crolles 2 Alliance will continue?
The Crolles 2 Alliance (between STMicroelectronics, Freescale and NXP) is due to terminate at the end of 2007. The agreement with IBM opens up broader international perspectives. So there is no sense of a break, but much more than just carrying on something that already exists. The Crolles 2 Alliance was a stage, an excellent learning process that has enabled us to take a step up internationally and to develop further our collaborative strategy. The Crolles 2 Alliance was calibrated, in terms of means and resources, to meet objectives related to the 65 and 45nm nodes set for a fi ve-year period, from 2002 to 2007. But that confi guration was no longer adequate for the following generations, due to their development cost increase.

Does the new agreement provide a scaled response to the needs of the site?
With current market trends it is essential to set new goals, to defi ne the requisite conditions for producing next-generation microelectronics technologies, on 32 and 22 nanometre (nm) processes. To bridgethis technological gap, R&D investment must be tripled and expenditure on production tools doubled. STMicroelectronics already spends 15% to 20% of its budget on R&D and there is no question of exceeding that threshold. It was consequently essential to fi nd a new confi guration capable of meeting these needs. We had the choice between two possible attitudes: either we could give up, or we could affi rm our determination to carry on. STMicroelectronics adopted the second option. Obviously our desire to remain involved in every stage of the industrial process, from design through to manufacturing, was important but it was not enough in itself. We had to demonstrate our ability to make a change of scale to join one of the world’s main ecosystems.
There are three main semiconductor ecosystems worldwide. There is Intel, which does not want to enter into a partnership with its competitors; there are Asian foundries (TSMC in Taiwan and newcomers in China), with which there is a serious risk of social dumping; and lastly there is IBM and its research allies. Very quickly a technological alliance with IBM emerged as the right solution. IBM’s experience in semiconductors goes back to their very beginning in the 1960s and the company’s stock of innovation and creativity is a global benchmark. Our agreement with IBM will enable ST Crolles to move up to a different scale, which is essential to its development.

Does the change of scale concern research and production?
It’s a change of scale for ST, and for the Crolles site. Initially the investment effort will enable us to optimise production capacity and increase output from 2,800 to 4,500 300mm wafers a week.
With this agreement STMicroelectronics is joining the IBM CMOS Technology Alliance, a durable ecosystem consisting of six industrial partners. From a fi nan-cial point of view this alliance makes it possible to raise the budgets required for the technology generations based on 32nm and 22nm processes. IBM recogni-zes our capacity for collaboration and there is now a European centre and a US centre, both operating in two fi elds: upstream research and production.
There is no doubt that the assets of Grenoble-Isère, around the Minalogic competitiveness centre, weighed in the balance. Our potential for upstream research, along with CEA Leti, was a decisive factor. Until now the Albany Nanotech Centre in New York state was the only reservoir of brainpower serving the IBM CMOS Technology Alliance. The agreement between ST and IBM means that CEA Leti will become the Grenoble-Isère equivalent of the Albany centre.

What does the agreement involve in practical terms?
The agreement encompassescore com-plementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, for which the focal point is IBM-US, but also enhanced technologies for system-on-chips (SoC), a fi eld in which ST-Crolles is the market leader. Regarding high added value deri-vative technologies such as embedded memory and analog devices, there are many consumer applications, forming the backbone of our customer portfolio.
The fundamental change concerns the nature of our partnership. To use an image, the Crolles 2 Alliance worked in much the same way as a block of fl ats under joint ownership: each partner owned its own machines, came to Crolles to experiment on industrial research and shared the facility’s production.
The agreement between ST and IBM opens the way for collaborative exchange. We will be moving up to a global integration model. Thanks to this agreement there will be reciprocal exchanges of teams between IBM and ST.

What impact do you expect this to have on production?
By boosting production capacity to 4,500 silicon wafers a week by 2010 we will be able to cover the full extent of demand from ST’s customers, and more. The resulting margin for manoeuvre will enable us to offer excess output to other fi rms, regardless of whether they are IBM partners or not, as our agreement with IBM is by no means exclusive. ST also has the option of working with foundries all over the world in Singa-pore, Taiwan, Israel and so on. In this respect IBM’s microelectronics club is very open, with each partner controlling the technology it owns.

What is the outlook for the future?
The Crolles 2 Alliance was a stage, a springboard to reach a truly international ecosystem and the defi nition of a business model for the next fi ve years. The new agreement strengthens the position of Grenoble-Isère as a global world wide reference.
As for the market, after years of frantic growth (15% to 20% a year), the semiconductor industry has matured. We are currently registering annual growth of 7% to 8%, which is still twice the rate for global industrial growth.
We may look forward to the future with plenty of confi dence.