James, thanks for response, it kind of agrees with my read of the situation.
Maybe when you have time, you could post your thoughts on matching old equipment with new steppers that have higher throughput?
TIA,
Yakov.
PS. Predicting the % of DUV in stepper orders is somewhat important for CYMER and even more for non-DUV i-line producers like UTEK.
For example, Dataquest expects about 1000 steppers to be sold in 1998, 46% DUV. If the number of steppers ordered drops to 750, but %DUV increases to 60% (as per ASML report), CYMER will be virtually unaffected (750*.6 = 450 lasers), but i-line orders will fall from 540 to 300.
In a nicer scenario, with 1000 steppers being sold, 60% DUV would mean extra 140 lasers for CYMER. |
