If you had told me seven years ago that the industry would consider spending around $30 million for lithography tools (immersion 193 nm), I would have laughed out loud. That is even truer of tools ranging $50 million (extreme ultraviolet [EUV]), and yet here I sit, looking at the numbers, continually amazed by how much, how far, and how long this industry will spend, go, and wait to extend the frontiers of transistor technology. My vexation comes on the heels of Intel's recent revelation of their whole 45-nm solution using metal gates and, of all things, hafnium. Pardon the pun, gentle reader, for I am herald to the transition next to darken our doorways.
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