Yes I do since I was involved in one of the first rounds of start ups with all of the problems. Most notably were the etchers whose configuration at 150mm were not transferrable to 200mm along with all of the diffusion equipment that just was not ready. IT was an ugly process.
I do not think this will happen this time around since a good deal of time and effort was put into the 300mm equipment set, courtesy of the prtracted downturn.
As far as I am concerned, most of the 300mm fabs are "pilot lines" today even though there are officially fabs like Infineon that are at 300mm production, supposedly. So to play it safe, my response to the linked post is that by the end of this year there will be enough 300mm fabs on line to get our first real set of feedback as to how well this transition is going.
There are 29 new fabs coming on line this year and next, not counting upgrade, expansion or retrofit fabs. A majority of those fabs will be 300mm I believe. IF so, we should have enough fabs on line in mid to late 2001 such that the entire equipment set is sufficiently debugged.
And yes, right after these come on line, you might very well have targeted the peak of the industry cycle which should be late 2001 to mid 2002. However, because of the industry downturn and its duration, I do not think we will see the same rate of decline off the peak as we saw in the last cycle.
With the right to change my mind over the next year or so, I think the industry is sustainable going into 2003 but you never know if the industry goes brain dead again and overbuilds like it always does when they find themselves capacity constrained. As always, keeping an eye on the Taiwan foundries is the key indicator for industry perfromance and when the peak is reached and how fast we decline from it. as of now, they are building like there is no tomorrow.
AV |
