Ian RE: 300mm
As someone previously stated, the central differences in our arguments are that you chose to look at wafer throughput, which will be lower at 300mm (in spite of expected high power lasers, faster resists, faster stages etc.) I was looking at it from a cost per wafer viewpoint, which is where 300mm has the advantage over 200mm.
To get the same wafer output at 300mm vs. 200mm a fab will need more steppers and lasers.
To get the same product die output a fab will need fewer steppers and lasers.
I prefer to look at product output because thats what a company sells, not wafers.
If Intel prducess and sells Y million Pentiums in a year with a given number of 200mm tools, they should be able to produce the same number next year with a lower number of 300mm tools. That's because although the increase of a 300mm wafer may be 2.5X, the speed of the litho process will also go up due to the aformentioned increases in power and speed of the various components of the process. The increases in tool speed will not, however, compensate 100% for the fact that the stepper must now process a larger area.
In the future, type as fast as you like. I'm a lithography process development engineer and can understand the technology. No hard feelings on my part, this time. Just a diiference of perspective.
James "smart enough to be long on Cymer" Word |
