Sivakumar, Swaminathan

2016 Distinguished Alumni Award

For developing innovative lithographic processes to enable cost-effective scaling of advanced microprocessor technologies

Swaminathan (Sam) Sivakumar is an Intel Senior Fellow in the Technology and Manufacturing Group and Director of Lithography in the Portland Technology Development organization at Intel Corporation, leading the definition, development and deployment of Intel’s next-generation lithography processes. He is also responsible for developing resolution-enhancement techniques and optical proximitycorrection technologies in support of Intel’s leading-edge patterning solutions.

Sivakumar has dedicated his career to the lithography area, working on photo-resists, patterning equipment and process development. His contributions to lithography development, characterization and transfer to high-volume manufacturing have spanned every submicron process technology generation at Intel since 1990. Sivakumar received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 1987.

An Intel Fellow since 2002, Sivakumar was named an Intel Senior Fellow in 2014. His work has been honored three times with Intel Achievement Awards, the company’s highest technical award. He co-invented industry-leading interconnect patterning techniques for aluminum metallization on the 180-nanometer (180nm) process, as well as for dualdamascene copper metallization on the 130nm and newer processes. Sivakumar’s technological achievements have also been recognized outside Intel, most recently in 2012 when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers honored him with the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for his outstanding contributions to the field of lithography. He has authored or co-authored more than two dozen published papers on semiconductor processing and has been issued more than 45 patents in process architecture, lithography and patterning, with several more pending.