If this story hasn't been posted here yet, it should be of great interest. The gist is, "Here comes another round of investment by the DRAM makers. Those who hold back won't exist much longer."
FWIW,
Ian.
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted at 6 p.m. EDT/3 p.m. PDT, 7/27/98
Lack of DUV technology
to hit DRAMs, says Toshiba exec
By Jack Robertson
NEW YORK -- The lack of sub-0.25-micron process technology among
some major DRAM makers could trigger a shakeout of memory suppliers
next year, predicted the president of Toshiba America Electronic
Components Inc. during an interview here today.
Only about a half dozen major DRAM manufacturers now have significant
deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography production capacity needed to push
feature sizes below the quarter-micron barrier, said Bob Brown during a visit
to New York City. He believes a few more manufacturers might be able to
ramp up DUV-based production in the next year, but Brown said suppliers
without this capability won't be competitive because the older production
processes will result in sharply lower yields from wafers--about half as many
chips as with DUV photolithography.
Brown said Toshiba's 64-Mbit DRAM fab in Japan has converted to DUV
production, and it will be moving to 0.20-micron feature-size chips by the end
of the year. The firm's joint venture with IBM Corp.--Dominion
Semiconductor in Manassas, Va.--will be running quarter-micron chips by the
end of 1998. Toshiba's DRAM foundry partner--Winbond Electronics Corp.,
in Hsinchu, Taiwan--will also be at sub-quarter-micron production by the
beginning of next year, he added.
The Toshiba official predicted the current DRAM global glut would continue
well into 1999. Brown said that current chip capacity still exceeds the
60-to-70% annual bit growth in demand, but that could change if some major
DRAM suppliers fall too far behind in the next-generation DUV processes
and corresponding die shrinks.
Brown said he believed Korea's Samsung Electronics and Hyundai
Electronics Industries were cutting back DRAM production but that this was
from lower production rates of 16-Mbit devices as they scale back their
involvement in the maturing generation. Like other industry executives,
Brown said be found it hard to believe that the two Korean chip makers
could successfully stop and start total fab production for a week every
month. He doubted that such efforts would lower the global DRAM
oversupply very much if other vendors kept up and increased their output.
Toshiba is shutting down its main fabs for 8 to 10 days for a routine summer
vacation, but Brown said that alone wouldn't alter the world's DRAM
oversupply significantly. |
