Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (31378)	7/12/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Chip Gear Industry Could Get Its Own Roadmap: supersite.net Chip gear roadmap could be coming SAN FRANCISCO- There's a good chance that a new roadmap will be started soon that covers semiconductor production equipment and materials technologies. A coalition of trade groups from around the world will join Sematech representatives to meet here during Semicon West to consider developing the equipment industry's first international roadmap. It would be designed to aid wafer fab suppliers in coping with the risks and growing costs of accelerating chip technologies. More specifically, the goal would be to aid those suppliers in keeping up with the pace of device shrinks that keeps accelerating in each new revision of the Semiconductor Industry Association's chip technology roadmap. Chip industry committees, which are now rushing to complete the 1999 update to the SIA roadmap, are now debating a proposal to speed up the cycles between technology nodes from three years to two (see story in the June publication). But the people now pushing the equipment roadmap are even more ambitious. Besides dealing with the pace of technology, they also want to address the economic issues facing suppliers trying to keep up with the growing demands of chip makers. "The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors -- or the SIA roadmap -- is strictly a technology-driven 'needs' document," points out Paul Peercy, president of the SEMI/Sematech group. His trade group represents equipment and materials suppliers working with Sematech. The current semiconductor roadmap "does not address what the suppliers have to do to meet those needs," adds Peercy, who is working with regional trade groups, as well as with Sematech, to define the new planning document that could supplement the SIA's roadmap. "[The equipment roadmap] is still in the serious discussion stage, and it remains to be determined when it will be produced, but a prototype could be out next year," Peercy predicts. "Rather than trying to do a 15-year roadmap in every technology, we might set up a framework or roadmap committee to look at the SIA roadmap and select areas that seem to present the greatest difficulties and need the most attention," he says. "We could then flesh out a more comprehensive document as we gain experience." Prime candidates for the initial roadmap document would include "all aspects of lithography, metrology, and etch," Peercy says. "We would need to think about wafer size," he adds, referring to the revised 1998 SIA roadmap calling for a move to 450-mm substrates in 2011. It still appears that a switch to 300-mm wafers is at least a couple of years away. The delayed 300-mm transition underscores the need for better planning documents, say industry officials now involved in the equipment roadmap proposal. They also are insisting that more attention be paid to economic and market issues as well as to the differences between the business models of suppliers and chip makers. "If you look at the demise of the 300-mm programs, it was not a technology demise as much as [it was] an economic demise," notes Stanley T. Meyers, president of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), which is offering to act as an umbrella group for the new roadmap efforts. Capital equipment suppliers are still unhappy about spending billions of dollars on 300-mm tool development and then failing to sell any of the new equipment because the 12-inch pilot lines were delayed. Executives from these vendors, meeting in June at a South Korean symposium sponsored by Sematech's international subsidiary, have asked the consortium to "document lessons learned from the 300-mm interaction in order to identify factors that could help ensure [that] this was a unique experience and one not likely to be repeated." In mid-July, SEMI plans to assemble representatives from U.S., European, and Japanese equipment makers to discuss the format for an equipment and materials planning document. "Coming out of this meeting, we hope to have a straw-man proposal for each of our boards [of directors]," says SEMI's Myers. "From there, we would then get more involved with our members [to begin drafting a document]." By J. Robert Lineback