David, Photomasks should not be considered as an equipment (your reference to "cleaning equipment like photomasks".
The photomask is more like a necessary extension of the design. It is the "stencle" for transfering the design information to the silicon wafer. A set of photomasks are required for each IC design.
There was a time, years ago, when it would have been appropriate to consider them as a consumable since they would be slowyly degraded and destroyed in the process of makeing Integrated Circuits. Not any more. These days it takes about 1.5 photomask sets per Integrated Circuit design and unless there is a revision to the design, the mask set (between 8-18 photomasks at between $700-$2500 each - typically) lasts the life of the design.
Historically, the semiconductor industry was reluctant to introduce new designs during boom times since this took capacity away from proven products that already had been marched down the learning curve (Mfg. costs have been lowered).
Boom times for Semiconductors often ment growth for Photomask businesses, but at a slower rate than for semiconductor manufacurers.
On the other hand, down times for Semiconductors, caused Semi houses to rush out new designs to try to capture new markets and applications. This cushioned photomask suppliers from the worst of the down turns. Not as good a performance in the high tech good times and not as bad as their bad times.
In more recent years, when the semiconductor industry went into a slump, Photomasks were badly hurt because the slump coensided with CAD/design rule checking advances that reduced the number of mask sets it took to produce a working (a good yielding design)from an average of 3-4 to the 1.5 mentioned earlier. Suddenly the Photomask industry had 50% too much capacity. That's when the consolications began. DuPont was out in front with Photronics getting a late start. Align Rite survived and grew feeding off the low end of the technical requirement spectrum and the uncertanity caused by the growth of DuPont and Photronics. Many Semi houses were used to playing one Photomask supplier off another for advantages in price, delivery and quality. They needed/need Align Rite as a foil to DuPont and Photronics.
There are other merchant Photomask houses in the US, but only Diamon Images, Cupertino, CA is worth talking about.
Good references on this are a report issued by Rose and a guide published by Reynolds Consulting, both in the the SF bay area.
Hope this helps give a perspective into this industry. |
