Re: commercial DUV deployment timetable
James, I'd been posting questions about commercial DUV applications for a while myself, wondering why CYMER PR doesn't release any information about CYMER lasers used to produce some advanced chips (seemingly, this would be a great PR and would not interfere with any non-disclosure requirements imposed by lithography companies).
Eventually, I'd come to a conclusion that 1997 is a bit early for commercial applications to come on line, but in a few months we should hear more about them - hope that's not a wishful thinking.
Consider the AMD case: they were probably one of the first companies experimenting with DUV. I would guess that they have been working on DUV at least since early 1997 - witness a July article describing their experience with DUV lasers (and one of the issues raised in that article was that introduction of DUV requires massive process reengineering, production line balancing etc.). They are under a lot of pressure, yet just starting the .25 ramp up.
Thus, I'd venture a guess that there is at least a year delay between receiving DUV equipment for trials and getting into commercial applications.
It may be my wishful thinking, but the lack of running commercial applications NOW does not mean that companies are not ordering multiple DUV systems for the second half of 1998 - early 1999. Given the delays, orders for lasers needed in 2H98 - early 1999 should form the current backlog. Of course, the inventory levels at stepper manufacturers may affect their ordering policies. The only relevant piece of information on this topic came from CC when the management suggested that about 50% of lasers shipped before the conference were already working in trial systems.
It may be useful to study the list of companies ordering trial systems - most likely, these are near-future DUV users. A post listing companies working with CYMER equipment appeared a few days ago. All I recall (off the top of my head) is that CYMER had far more customers in Taiwan than in Korea. I'll try to locate this post, also there should be a partial listing in 10K. The size and geography of companies on this list may provide some insights into the near-term DUV market.
Regards,
Y. |
