Robert, thanks for that post, so now we have it, we need 10 exposure per wafer, so a typical DUV stepper should be able to handle about 2000 wafres per month (I believe the troughput to be 100 wafers hour, which is ten wafer per hour per stepper with ten exposures). Now all we need to find out is how many new modern wafer fabs or how many conversions are we going to have. The largest new wafer fabs have capacity of 40,000 start per month, such a plant will need, therefore 20 steppers. Upgrading will be directed at typical fab of 10,000 wafer starts per months, so if we take new capacity at .25 to be about 50 average fabs per year at 20,000 wafer starts we get a yearly demand of 500 steppers for these fabs. That number might be a tad low, since I have heard that Taiwan is planing 16 new mega wafer fabs just by itself, but that might be spread over 2 years. This will still give them close to 20% of all new capacity which is kind of high.
Does anyone have a good number on the new fab planned over the next few years?
Right now, I have to estimate demand at a min of 500 steppers but I could be low on this. Help anyone??? By the way, I have assumed single shifts and if these animals are woorked full time (around the clock even at 25 to 30% down time for maintenance) the number might actually be lower.
Zeev
Zeev |
