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Technology Stocks : PRI Automation (PRIA)
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To: Shakush who wrote (710)6/20/1999 9:18:00 AM
From: Ian@SI  Read Replies (2) of 1214
 
Shakush,

I believe you have some different business thrusts blended into your question.

Specifically, am I harboring the mistaken belief that full automation is a prerequisite for sub .25 micron environments because of air purity considerations?

Yes.

However, what's happening is a product introduced by ASYT which could be viewed as enclosing the wafers in a "mini clean room" significantly reduces the cost and complexity of keeping the air immediately surrounding the wafer clean when compared with keeping the whole fab equally clean.

Published street talk I've seen holds that next generation automation systems are at least partially dependent on 300mm wafers being too heavy to carry.

This is true. The area of the wafer is 2 1/4 times as much for 300mm wafers vs 200mm wafers. They weigh at least 2 1/4 times as much. A full cassette full of wafers may go beyond the ability of some fab workers to carry from tool to tool.

More to the point, the larger wafer will hold about 2 1/2 times as many chips (at the same feature size) as a 200mm wafer. As there will continue to be shrinks that multiple will likely be larger soon. Imagine the value of a cassette full of wafers that have neared completion of all process steps. Then imagine the lost value of that cassette being dropped.

Essentially, the making of chips (especially logic chips) is becoming more complex. With full automation of the movement of wafers from bay to bay, and tool to tool, one type of errors is eliminated. Coupling that with full automation of reticle management removes another cause of errors.

For an industry which directly contributes to the automation of the rest of the economy, fabs have been primarily manual labour intensive.

This is changing.

PRIA is the global leader at making it happen.

Ian.
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