I think we're up over 20% since Mr. Sam's recent bullish post. It seems the whole sector is on fire. The following article both poses a challenge and opportunity for SFAM -- they need to roll out equipment quicker, but the lead held by AMAT is no longer secure.
Intel Exec Chides Semi Turnaround Time
Jan 12, 2000 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- Semiconductor equipment
suppliers must speed up the delivery time and ramp-to-performance of
their gear to satisfy the shorter design cycles of their chip
customers, a senior Intel executive said Tuesday.
"Our technology cycles have shrunk over the last 10 years from three
and half years to two years and sometimes even less than two years,"
said Michael Splinter, senior vice president and general manager of
Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group. "When the technology gets
that fast, there isn't a whole lot of time to wait. We need that mature
equipment performance and run rate early in the life cycle of the
technology right out of the box. That's a huge expenditure for us
today, waiting and working and driving the pieces of equipment to
maturity.
Splinter was speaking to executives at the annual Industry Strategy
Symposium in Pebble Beach, Calif.
"Oftentimes, we don't get there before the peak of the technology, and
that just results in us buying more pieces ofequipment than we would
have needed," Splinter said. "It frustrates us, and frustration between
customers and suppliers is never good."
Chip makers need their equipment vendors to respond more quickly, he
said.
"I don't think we've seen lead time reduction in the equipment industry
ever," Splinter said. "We see stretching out then shrinking out, but
lead times never get on average less than six to nine months. That's
too long in this economy. It's too long compared to the life cycles of
our technology."
By the time the equipment is installed and running, a full year can
pass before wafers start coming out of the end of the pipe, he added.
"What can we do together to cut that time? Why can't we be three months
on average?" Splinter asked the audience, which was made up primarily
of equipment and materials suppliers.
Price competition in the microprocessor market has forced Intel to pay
greater attention to cost.
"A few years ago, I think most people would say Intel doesn't worry a
whole lot about cost, but certainly I think you've seen a pretty
dramatic change in the way we act and the way we negotiate and the
overall concern of the resulting cost of our product," he said.
One of those changes has been to use more than one supplier for certain
pieces of equipment, he said. To win Intel's business, a supplier will
have to make the best balance between technology, speed, and cost,
Splinter said.
The chip industry will need to better utilize remote diagnostics to
service quickly the far-flung wafer fabs, he said. With most of the
equipment expertise concentrated in a relatively few heads, the
Internet will also need to be used to get that expertise where it's
needed, he said.
Intel plans to quickly move forward to 300-mm wafer sizes, since that
will reduce its cost of wafers back to where it was in the early
1990's, Splinter said.
"That's extremely motivating for us," he said. Intel will start its
0.13-micron next generation process on 200-mm wafers, but will quickly
move it to 300-mm wafers, he added.
Copyright (C) 2000 CMP Media Inc. |
