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

To: Tito L. Nisperos Jr. who wrote (48946)	7/9/2001 8:13:46 PM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Being in the Equip. Industry for some time now, I’ll toss in an answer. Most systems are designed and built for a specific step in the overall process. A particular process step would require specific interaction between the machine and the actual wafer. The wafer generates the need for a specific step and the Equip OEM designs their equipment to address that one specific step. A given machine may address one or more steps within the overall process, but typically the chamber is specific to one step. If a change, “copper / 300mm” in a process step changes, the machine will need to address the change, with a change in it’s designs. This small change in process requirement at the wafer side pushes a machine design change. In the areas were I work, “Etching”, we are concerned with ever so small differences. The angles of a focus ring are specifically related to the wafer and the machine's performance. I know that one chamber could have dozens of focus ring addressing customer specific wafer designs. What works for customer A, may not work for customer B. Each wafer's interaction with the machine determines the machine's performance. Any changes of the wafer could require a machine design change. A more interesting sideline to the discussions would be the natural life of the standard semi tools. Here, again in Etch, the machine's life is typically 4-6 years. These machines would have 1 to 3 upgrades to the tool during its life due to the changes in the wafers. A few customers tries to make their machines last up to 10 years, but this is rare. Many of the systems in use now are 2 to 4 years old and their end of life is in near future. Just a thought. Stan

To: Tito L. Nisperos Jr. who wrote (48946)	7/9/2001 10:33:06 PM
From: Math Junkie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

One reason that technology buys continue even in bad times on the part of chipmakers is competition. Here is an example: I was responsible for dealing with engineering problems that would interfere with the building of wafer inspection systems. Many times electronic components that we used would go obsolete, so we could no longer buy them. One such component was an analog-to-digital converter chip. Our circuit board had been in production for a few years, and the newer chips had gotten to be about one-tenth the size, at about 1/20th the price of the old chips. Under those conditions, the market demand for the older chips had fallen off so much that the chipmaker could no longer make money manufacturing them. There was simply not enough volume of demand to make it economically feasible to do it. So the chipmaker was forced to discontinue the old chip, and we were forced to redesign our circuit board to use the new chip. As new technologies become available, competitive forces sooner or later mandate their adoption.