Fifty years is a long time, even for an old guy like me. That is how long it’s been since the first SPIE lithography conference. That 1976 conference was held in San Jose and had 26 papers on most of the expected topics: masks, metrology, exposure tools, resist processing, and even X-Ray lithography. Three papers were in a special session on making chips for the Viking Mars Lander. According to the introduction to the conference proceedings (SPIE Volume 80) by conference chair James Giffin, “The meeting was both timely and useful, since semiconductor microlithography is recognized by many in the electronics industry as being the most important process used in the manufacture of complex semiconductor devices.” It is striking to me that this description would have been applicable to every SPIE lithography conference since, including the one happening in San Jose this week. So is his last sentence in that introduction: “Ample opportunity was provided to discuss the subject matter with fellow professionals in the field and to explore newly emerging ideas during the panel discussions.”
The Advanced Lithography and Patterning Symposium has grown significantly in those fifty years, as has the entire semiconductor industry, but the core value of the now six conferences that make up the meeting remains the same. One slight difference is that this year’s panel discussions will be looking backwards rather than forward, in honor of this fiftieth anniversary. I’ll be on that panel on Monday night (thanks mostly to my advanced age – I’ve been to every SPIE lithography conference since my first in 1985) hoping to glean the important lessons from the past and how they might apply to the future.
And the future is what this symposium is all about – the future of lithography, and as a consequence semiconductor manufacturing, the electronics industry, AI, and just about every other thing about modern life that makes it, well, modern. Working in lithography all these years has been many things for me: exciting, energetic, educational, stressful, fast-paced, financially rewarding, sometimes frustrating, but never boring. Mostly I am grateful to be in a community that has given me a welcoming professional home and many lifelong friends. It is good to be back in San Jose!
