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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gottfried who wrote (1554)	7/17/2002 8:06:54 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

TI sticks to 300-mm ramp plan By Peter Clarke Semiconductor Business News (07/17/02 05:08 a.m. EST) DALLAS, Texas -- Apparently seeing plenty of demand for its chips at the leading edge Texas Instruments Inc. is sticking with plans to ramp the production of its 130-nanometer process technology on 300-millimeter wafers at its DMOS 6 facility here. As others, such as Intel, seem to be pushing out plans to move to 300-mm wafers the Dallas-based company has formally announced the qualification of its 130-nm process on 300-mm wafers and joins the ranks of Infineon and few others as active commercial producers on 300-mm wafers. The company also said it plans to be producing on 130-nm process technology at five facilities before the end of the year. As well as DMOS 6 TI is already producing 130-nm at its 200-mm wafer “Kilby” facility. It also plans to have “electrically equivalent” process technologies running at three Taiwanese wafer fabs to implement its foundry strategy for leading-edge process. Peter Rickert, TI fellow and process development platform manager, said that TI expected to qualify one UMC wafer fab in the third quarter and another UMC fab and a TSMC wafer fab in the fourth quarter of 2002. The details are substantially the same as TI predicted two months ago (see May 17 story). The company is mass producing a wireless baseband chip in the copper and low-k 130-nm process on about 5700 wafers per month right now, expanding production to 10,000 wafer per month by year end. The DMOS 6 facility could eventually be capable of running 35,000 wafers per month when fully equipped. Rickert said the line had qualified in the second quarter and so the ramp is already substantially underway and with good yields. “Chips on the edge of the wafer are yielding, it's extremely exciting” he said. Rickert explained that getting a reasonable commercial yield is an essential part of TI's qualification process. But he accepted that costs may take a while to be solidly in favor of 300-mm wafer processing. TI claims to get a 2.4 times area improvement from its move to 300-mm but Rickert accepted that 300-mm wafers cost substantially more than their 200-mm diameter equivalents. “The cost [of the wafers] is two to three times higher and we are getting 2.4 times as many die per wafer so its pretty much breakeven right now. But by the 2004 time frame we expect 300-mm wafers to be only twice as much as 200-mm wafers and the benefit will be solidly in favor.” Nonetheless TI has not announced any plans for converting existing fabs or building new fabs to use 300-mm wafers, prepared instead to let foundry partners face that decision.