On Sat, 5 May 2001 10:12:27 +0200, "Han Maenen"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I do not know about the situation at Intel, but I know that not that long
>ago, wafers were habitually called 8, 12 etc. inch wafers. Yes, why would
>any computer magazine convert inch sizes to metric? I think that the industy
>has gone metric in these fields.
>BTW, is the computer industry changing from 0.1 inch to 2.5 mm spacing for
>chips? And what about clean rooms, where they measure(d) dust particles per
>cubic foot?
>
>Han
I believe the design of wafers went to metric with the 100 mm version.
Like diskettes, they had previously been hard-imperial (I think 2.5"
was the last in this series) and so the new sizes still got referred
to in old terms. This extended for many years and included the 8"
wafer. Though the 300 mm wafer was often referred to (particularly in
the press) as 12", it seemed about this time that the metric
descriptions entered common currency.
As for IC pitches: I don't think we'll see 0.1" converted to 2.5" for
legacy reasons, but as the latest small-pitch packages are in hard
metric they will eventually become the norm.
Chris
--
UK Metrication Association: http://www.metric.org.uk/
