News Item of Interest. Cymer seems to be spreading..Soon the stock
will as well.......
Intel plans to upgrade DEC fab
By Jack Robertson
NEW YORK--Intel Corp. plans to move quickly to install new 0.25-micron process equipment in Digital Equipment Corp.'s chip plant after it acquires the Hudson, Mass., fab as part of a broad-based agreement between the two companies (see today's story on agreement).
" would include the quarter-micron Micrascan step-and-scan lithography systems from Silicon Valley Group Lithography. Intel uses these systems in its other fabs.
Intel, IBM, and Motorola are all using the modified Micrascan-II-plus now to make quarter-micron wafers, der Torossian said.
To get development going on the next-generation Micrascan-IV, a half-dozen major chip makers paid SVGL $15 million each up front to help finance the development and insure that they would be getting first deliveries. The SVG chairman, who was interviewed at the SEMInvest Conference in New York in late January, said the first Miscrascan-IV will be shipped to South Korea's Samsung Electronics.
The lithography firm has "spec'd" its excimer laser Micrascan-III for 0.2-micron capability, but like other laser 248-nm tools, it is expected to handle 0.18-micron wafers as well. The system gets a more defined pattern than the Microascan II-plus from the coherent light source.
The Micrascan-IV's promise of reaching 0.13-micron line widths has catapulted SVGL into a serious market contender, according to industry observers. "You know customers are serious if they put up $15 million each up front to assure themselves of getting one of the first deliveries of the next generation machine," der Torossian said. The Micrascan-IV will use a 297-nm laser to pattern wafers at 0.18 to 0.13 micron.
SVGL is banking on the upcoming system's larger field of view to compete with conventional deep-UV excimer laser steppers from Nikon, Canon, and ASM Lithography.
Intel has made SVGL step-and-scan systems its main tool to make critical layers of the Pentium and Pentium Pro, because two dice can be patterned in a single exposure. The double-die exposure is also being used by IBM and Motorola for memory and logic devices, der Torossion said. |
