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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (25699)	3/18/2002 7:22:36 PM
From: Robin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25960

Sun, I have no knowledge of what the competition may be up to so I can't help you there. As for today's systems being good enough for five more years, that depends on what power levels the market will require by then. The Taurus came out in '96 and was a 1KHz, 10W system. 2000/01 brought out the 4KHz, 40W Orion system. So if you want to extrapolate, it looks like every 2.0-2.5 years the market requires the power level to double. That is partially driven by Moore's Law (smaller geometries require shorter wavelength, shorter wavelength requires more power to image the same area). In five years, the market may require a 160-200W source perhaps, especially at the smaller wavelengths. Without a significant improvement in efficiency, all three laser suppliers faced a major technical roadblock, delivery of supply voltage to the laser and removal of waste heat. Cymer is now the only company to have a publicly disclosed solution to this. As far as Cymer having a better hold on the market, go back to some of the investor conferences. Bob Akins is constantly talking about cost of ownership. This can be improved in a number of ways, namely: Reduce the utilities cost, i.e., less power, cooling, etc. Extend life of components, i.e., less recurring disposable costs Improve light quality; i.e., improved wafer yield Lower energy/pulse; improved life of optics More pulses/second; reduced imaging time or higher throughput The new Raptor design can reduce costs for the end customer on all fronts. Cymer has gained a significant marketing edge with this design. That's all. Now the competition not only has to deliver light of a comparable quality and with comparable equipment uptime (the basic fight thus far), but also significantly lower their facilities requirements and cost of operation. Big advantage as I see it, but that's my opinion, FWIW. Robin!