Formerly About Applied Materials Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials

AMAT 259.21

-4.0%

Dec 12 9:30 AM EST

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: Paul V. who wrote (9161)	10/21/1997 11:25:00 PM
From: Big Bucks	Read Replies (1) of 70976

Hi Paul V, You said: >>Therefore, it appears that for the semi's to become more profitable they must first purchase the equipment from the equipment makers. << The question should be," when will they purchase the equipment" and also consider they need to have fab space to put the equipment into a production environment. The transiition to 300mm and sub 0.25uM geometries will take considerable time to implement for several key reasons. 1st- the entire equipment set and "semi-standards" needs to be agreed upon and implemented. All the necessary support equipment and production (not beta) manufactured equipment needs to be fully functional and capable of meeting the manufacturing production schedule of the chip makers, they won't risk trying to make product on unproven or unreliable equipment, the expense is just to high to make a mistake and order equipment that can't meet the mission critical aspects required.. 2nd- Each shrink in device geometries causes a whole new set of problems that need to be understood and remedied prior to commiting product to the market. No one wants to sell a product that may have unknown reliability issues that crop up 6 months after it is sold, recalls can kill a product/manufacturer. 3rd- All the equipment and new technologies must be tuned to work in harmony to estabish a viable and smooth production flow. This means that all the bugs need to be worked out of the system to insure repeatable and high quality production output, this takes time to understand the problems and engineer around the obstacles. 4th- The product must start making money, which means that the market has to be ready to assimilate the new products being manufactured. If the market isn't there the product could fail or not be profitable. There are other roadblocks ahead, these changes in methodolgy and innovation take time and planning to implement. Just my opinion, regards, BB

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next