I hope Splinter sat in on the presentation by TSMC you posted notes from earlier....
Splinter:
"Instead, the IC-equipment industry “should focus on high returns” with their respective R&D dollars, he said. The industry should be investing in several areas, including lithography productivity, systematic defect elimination, among others, he said."
TSMC in "TSMC CEO takes shots at fab-tool makers"
"We need more automation and lower costs." or
"Without pulling any punches in a presentation here, Rick Tsai, president and chief executive of silicon foundry giant TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan), was especially critical about the soaring costs for lithography tools, lack of advancements in fab-automation, among other issues."
Message 22044357
Litho tools are optics... never cheap. As the field of view gets larger, expenses go up fast.... I'm not an expert in fab design, but it would seem you might get better productivity after a certain point trying to do litho faster per sq cm rather than do more at once.... and that would come with better automation and wafer handling.
ANyone know, if 300mm is mostly batch or single wafer processing? |
