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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT)
AMAT 252.34+1.0%12:59 PM EST
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From: etchmeister12/10/2010 12:38:02 AM
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Pi r squared is bad for equipment companies. If there are only five companies left buying equipment for 450mm, then they are screwed. They will have the screws put to them.

Now let's look at extendability of equipment:
Lam as a example:
The AutoEtch came out around 1982 - the tool was able to handle 4 inch wafers (and even 3 inch wafers) which was the mainstream at this time; with very little capex the AutoEtch could be extended to 125mm (5inch) wafers and 150mm wafers (6 inch wafers) - IOW a chipmaker who bought the tool for 100mm (4 inch) wafers had to spend very little money to upgrade it to 150mm - that's a huge jump in regards to Pi r squared and very little capex.
Next came the Rainbow targeting 8 inch wafers and backwards convertible to 6 inch, 5 and 4 inch.
Than came "bridgetools" - an 8 inch tool that could be scaled up to 12 inch
Regardless of development cost 450mm will require a completely new set of equipment - I doubt current 300mm wafer processing equipment can be easily upgraded to 450 mm.
Productivity needs to be improved - as always.
However there will be only a few players left that will be able to supply 450 mm wafer processing equipment and this market will be dominated by:
LRCX
VSEA
NVLS
AMAT
TEL

I did not include KLAC - they do not provide process technology -
they measure things and figure out defects
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