Dear Andrew,
fist let me say that I really enjoy the incredible insight You and many others are offering in this thread. I'm not a semi equip industry insider nor an academic expert in electrical engineering, but this thread truly enables me learning fast ! In fact, my strengths are strategic management and particularly marketing & investment research.
The latter had brought me to stepper & laser manufactureres. In Your post exchange2000.com You cite stretched life-spans for non-DUV equipment due to tricks like PSM, OPC etc. You also cite that a way might have been found to use conventional steppers etc. down to 0.25 micron level, which was, as I see it, solidly considered home turf of DUV technology. Now I got some questions, as I readjust my fact-set with this news:
1) Could there be a way (like PSM etc.) to increase life-span of conventional equipment even further (to 0.18 micron) ??
2) How long in terms of years should 0.18 and 0.13 fabs & processes be away from us now ?
3) Since EUV was considered to be the hot new technology around the corner still based on optical processing, could there be some sort of DUV-squeeze in the meantime developing, I mean a trend that might put DUV in sort of "sandwich" position ?? If conventional i-line equip can be used to 0.25 micron, why not try to immediately install EUV afterwards thus skipping one generation of equipment investments ??
4) if 3) is true, then this would be even more bad news for CYMI as market leader for DUV laser sources. Also 90% market share certainly lures contenders with power muscle (p.e. Komatsu) especially if margins are that high...
If You could comment on my guessing, I would really appreciate it.
Best wishes,
CROSSY |
