With the process technology continues to make progress, i.e from 4" to 5", 6" 8", 12",
and 1.2u, 1u, 0.8u, 0.6u, 0.5u 0.35u, 0.25u, 0.18u sub sub u, we will see the cost of investment for new fabs continues to explode. While the cost per die continues to decrease
as new technologies being implemented. With 12" , 0.25u technology, the productivity is
800% that of 6" fab with 0.5 u technology, however the monthly output of wafers are still
the same, i.e 40k pcs for both 6" and 12" fabs. What this means ? It means we need to sell
more dies and at least a market of 800% as large as our current market to sustain the continuing production of the 12 " fab, i.e 40k pcs of 12 " wafers per month, otherwise
we can not sustain the economic scale of the 12"fab. This also means the foundries are looking for big volume productions with lower price per die to expand the current market.
This also means the components price will drop further, but with a much larger market.ICs
will be used everywhere. This makes the recent drop of CPU and price of almost all IC components, and as a result of cheaper system price, i.e the sub 1000 PCs, and maybe
the sub $500 PCs in the very near future. But the market will be much and much larger. |
