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

To: Paul V. who wrote (18654)	4/8/1998 4:01:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 70976

300 mm transition (sorry if this was already posted): Posted: 9:00 p.m. EST, 4/2/98 Industry slips on transition to 300-mm wafers By Peter Clarke GENEVA - In the last few months the timetable for the semiconductor industry's transition to 300-mm silicon-wafer processing has slipped back by about a year, according to George Lee, director of the 300-mm initiative within the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) trade association. The delay has occured despite some high-profile announcements, such as the Siemens-Motorola pilot line in Dresden, Germany, which plans to be running silicon before the end of 1998, and several 300-mm announcements at the Semicon Europa exhibition and conference this week. Lee was at the exhibition, which was organized by SEMI, to provide a progress report on the transition to 300-mm wafer processing. He concluded that a delay was a good thing for the industry, but in a reversal of conventional wisdom, said that Siemens and Motorola are likely to benefit from being leaders of the transition. In the past, semiconductor managers have said they want to be a close second in their adoption of 300-mm technology, which would allow them to take an early benefit from the economies of scale that come from the larger wafers, while avoiding the engineering cost of developing the technology with the semiconductor-equipment industry. Based on discussions with chip firms, Lee has recently changed his predictions. He has reduced the forecast from seven pilot lines running by late 1998 to just two and pushed back the start for the first low- and medium-volume fabs from 1999 to 2000. The ramp of high-volume fabs is being pushed back even further. Whereas the SEMI prediction, based on knowledge of semiconductor makers plans, was for a steady flow of high-volume fabs coming on-stream starting in 2000, the prediction is for nothing to start before 2002. "It's slipping by about a year," said Lee. Early adopters of 300-mm wafers are likely to be IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Siemens and Motorola, said Lee. But most of these are talking about 1999 for the start of pilot lines with ramp of production in 2000 or 2001 depending on when the complete 300-mm tool chains become available. Lee said the reasons for the delay included the Asian financial crisis, general overcapacity in silicon manufacturing and the continued lack of demand for DRAMs. This has hit Asian and Japanese chip makers in particular. "Price pressure inevitably effects the ability to fund major programs," Lee said. "The economic reason for the transition is still on the horizon. It will kick in when we see a hardening of the DRAM market." Another factor in the delay is the lack of complete tool chains to make and process 300-mm wafers. According to reports circulating at Semicon Europa both I300I, the Sematech (Austin Texas) 300-mm wafer consortium, and Selete, the equivalent Japanese consortium, are behind in their projected schedules to demonstrate 300-mm capable tools. Part of the problem is acceleration in the expected move to finer processing geometries. Instead of introducing 300-mm wafers at 250-nm minimum geometries, equipment makers are being asked to provide 180-nm and 150-nm geometry capability. ASM Lithography NV (Veldhoven, Netherlands) announced at Semicon Europa that it has joined Canon Inc. as a supplier of stepper photolithography equipment for 300-mm wafers. The system will be used by Samsung Electronics (Seoul, South Korea) at the company's facility in Kihung. "We are not expecting a very fast ramp up of [300-mm] tools in the market place," said Evert Polak, vice president of marketing at ASM Lithography. SEMI's Lee gave a warning on the importance of adhering to standards for the transition. "Tool sets are not being built to I300I specifications." He said he knew of an example of a load-lock for a significant piece of equipment, supposedly 300-mm wafer ready. "The load-lock uses rollers. That's non-standard," he said. "The problem is that the market hasn't developed yet so the companies aren't getting the feedback to tell them that they are non-standard. It's a key item which needs to be addressed." Lee concluded, "This one-year push-out will benefit the industry overall. It will benefit equipment makers who have been slow starters by allowing them to catch up. It will benefit the semiconductor industry by providing choice and complete tool sets. It allows those equipment makers who are non-standard to build again without missing out on sales." While other chip makers have delayed plans for the 300-mm transition or are waiting for the equipment industry, Siemens and Motorola have taken the lead with their Semiconductor300 joint-venture in Dresden, Germany. First is a place senior managers of many semiconductor makers said they didn't want to be during the wafer transition. The accepted wisdom was that lead adopters paid a high price pathfinding for the industry. IBM is widely credited with having pioneered the transition from 6-inch to 200-mm wafers. "The situation is not analogous. IBM paid for silicon development, and paid for tool development. The existence of I300I and Selete changes the game. The semiconductor equipment and materials industry is paying for the transition this time," said Lee. "Why wouldn't you want to be first?" he asked. "They [Siemens and Motorola] may pay now but they may get to higher yields quicker. It's like being the only race car on the track. You are going to win as long as you finish the race."