Intel hopes to use the EUV technology to reduce IC device geometries down to about 0.03 micron, said Gerald Marcyk, director of component research at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company. Optical lithography will continue to be Intel's production workhorse for several more technology generations, but "this is something we're looking at in the next five or six years," added Marcyk during interviews with the press at the company's forum in San Jose.

Intel, which has earmarked $3 billion in R&D this year, has put its development muscle behind EUV technology as a leading candidate for next-generation lithography. EUV is competing with other post-optical tool candidates, including electron-beam and x-ray technologies, which are being pushed by other industry consortia.

Last month, Japanese consortium ASET (Association of Super-Advanced Electronic Technology) reported it had added Intel to its program for EUV lithography development (see July 12 story). Intel's move to help the Japanese consortium in EUV supplements its efforts in the U.S.-based Extreme Ultraviolet LLC group, which is also backed by Motorola, Advanced Micro Devices, and U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratories.

The U.S. consortium is now aiming to take the lead in EUV. "Early next year, we will get the first light in the EUV system,'' Marcyk said. "We are also looking to commercialize the technology, but this is still being discussed."

Officials with the U.S. EUV consortium are looking to license the group's technology to leading lithography vendors--namely ASM Lithography of the Netherlands and Silicon Valley Group Inc. in San Jose, according to Marcyk. It is highly unlikely that the group will transfer technology to leading lithography suppliers in Japan--Canon Inc. or Nikon Corp., he said. "This is going to be like political football," added the Intel R&D manager.

Intel is also putting part of its $3 billion R&D budget this year toward advancement of other next-generation manufacturing technologies, including some early work on 450-mm diameter wafers, which might replace 300-mm substrates in wafer fabs after this decade.

"The good news is that Moore's Law continues to power the Net,'' said David Tennenhouse, vice president of research and leader of Intel's Architecture Labs organization, "but I think the Internet architecture must be re-invented."

To stay at the leading-edge of industry technology, Tennenhouse said Intel is now "looking at everything." He said, "We are looking at nanotechnology. We will be looking at pushing atoms, but that's further out in the future."

With the chip industry just now beginning to bring up 300-mm wafer pilot lines and initial production expected in the next couple, Intel is checking out the prospects of even larger diameter substrates. "Everybody has agreed that the next technology is the 450-mm wafer,'' said Mung Chen, manufacturing planning manager at Intel. "But there's a debate if the 450-mm wafer will appear in 2011 or 2014," he added.