A friend of mine emailed me with this great article...I'm not sure if anyone has seen it yet, or posted it here. So here it is anyway:
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SAN DIEGO, Calif., Nov. 4 (North County Times/KRTBN)--Cymer Inc. has greatly increased its capacity to make lasers used in computer-chip manufacturing and will continue to dominate the market, company officials said Monday at the American Electronics Association conference here.
The company also rebutted in detail recent speculation its customers
have had unusual difficulty using the lasers. The speculation caused
shares of Rancho Bernardo-based Cymer to plummet in September.
But last month, Cymer reported third-quarter earnings of $7 million and
revenue of $57.5 million, compared to $2 million in earnings and $18.2 in revenue for the same period a year ago. Cymer can now make 1,000 deep-ultraviolet lasers a year, and has assembled a global support staff to help customers use the devices, Cymer's President and CEO Robert Atkins said Monday. Cymer's market
share is 80 percent, he said. "We are the semiconductor industry's technology of choice," Atkins said.
Cymer's excimer lasers are used in "steppers" -- instruments that
project a light pattern representing the chip's circuitry upon a wafer
of silicon treated with a photosensitive material. The pattern is developed to expose the circuitry, a technique known as
photolithography. Cymer's customers sell the devices to chip makers
such as Intel Corp. The degree of detail in the chip is limited by the
light's wavelength -- the smaller the wavelength, the finer the detail
that can be reproduced. This results in a more powerful chip with more circuitry.
An excimer laser is a gas laser that emits radiation as excimers -- a
type of molecule that can exist only in an energized, excited state.
"The laser is probably the single largest value-added element in the
(chip-making machine,)" Atkins said. Cymer's customers have not
reported any unusual difficulty in putting the lasers to use, Atkins
said.
"Is it difficult to manufacture deep UV steppers and scanners? You bet, " Atkins said. "Do all of our customers face difficulties and challenges? You bet. "The real question is, how fast can they overcome those, and are those problems out of the ordinary, beyond what would be expected in ushering in a new technology like this," he said. "We continue to maintain that no, that all those problems and challenges are all well within what is to be expected."
The state of the art at Cymer is lasers using krypton fluoride, Atkins
said. The next step will be lasers using argon fluoride, which can
produce light with an even shorter wavelength. As Cymer plans to meet these technological hurdles, it has greatly increased its knowledge of excimer lasers and has added people with the
expertise needed to its staff, Atkins said.
"We know how to build excimer lasers a lot better now than we did a year ago," Atkins said. "We had some difficulty earlier in the year
and late last year in ramping up our (research and development)
expenditures. We've been hiring scientists from all over the world, had to build new laboratories, get new equipment to use. Now we're pretty much back on track."
"This is leading-edge technology that's now being introduced into the fab (chip factory). It's been rushed in quickly at the demand of the
chip makers, and everyone's getting the bugs out," said William A.
Angus, III, Cymer senior vice president and chief financial officer.
Cymer's technology and market potential is strong, said Carl Johnson, president of Infrastructure, a semiconductor industry research based in Irving, Texas. "With the industry's transitioning to a smaller feature size, this plays into their hand," Johnson said. "They have been somewhat constrained by the ability to hire qualified engineering and support staff. I think they're getting that under control right now, and the next couple of years should be pretty interesting."
Demand from Cymer's immediate customers is also strong, Johnson said. "I've talked to a couple of the DUV stepper manufacturers here, and their business seems to be doing pretty well. That plays into the hands of Cymer, because they supply the lasers."
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