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

To: dougjn who wrote (20428)	6/16/1998 10:08:00 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Some more good news: 300-mm wafer movement slips deeper into holding pattern A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story updated at 6:30 p.m. EDT/3:30 p.m. PDT, 6/15/98 By J. Robert Lineback SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The movement to 300-mm wafers is showing all the signs of an industry transition in trouble. Not only are cautious chip makers still pushing back their initial use of the larger diameter wafers, but fab tool suppliers are now slowing development of 12-inch equipment because they see little demand for the systems during the current slump in capital investments, said industry officials here today during the third annual 300-mm Symposium. "We have a real chicken-or-egg situation here," warned Frank Robertson, director of Sematech's International 300-mm Initiative (I300I), which now sees nearly no new tools to evaluate in the middle of 1998 (see story in the June 15 publication). To date, only half of the 38 identified tool sets needed to fabricated a wafer have been evaluated by I300I, which plans to wind down its demonstration efforts in 1999 Meanwhile, the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) trade group said it plans to end its 300-mm Initiative after the a public forum at Semicon West next month in San Francisco. SEMI's 300-mm Initiative was launched in January 1996 to help facilitate a discussion among industry groups, consortia, chip makers and equipment suppliers in hope of accelerating the move to larger wafers. With many companies pushing back their 300-mm efforts and SEMI members being pinched by the soft market conditions, the trade group decided to end its full-time involvement in the initiative, but it will continue promote the move to larger 12-inch wafers, said Stanley T. Myers, president of the Mountain View, Calif.-based organization. "The equipment suppliers have spent heavily on 300-mm and there's a lot of inventory sitting around," he told the meeting. This atmosphere at year's 300-mm symposium meeting was much different than it was a year ago when equipment suppliers were hopeful that the transition was finally beginning to pick up momentum. That was also before the financial crisis in Asia took the steam out of the chip industry's recovery late last year, noted speakers at the today's sessions. Depending upon how the estimate is made, semiconductor equipment suppliers have invested between $4 billion to $10 billion in 300-mm system development since the early 1990s. (The numbers vary because process technology development for 0.25 and 0.18 micron are often intertwined with the development of the 300-mm systems.) Despite heavy investments in larger-wafer gear, tool suppliers are still falling way short of delivering what chip makers need to begin pilot lines and development fabs, cautioned Robertson, who addressed the meeting sponsored by SEMI. A number of equipment suppliers have decided to delay the completion of development work for beta tools into 1999, he said, adding that I300I may not be able to conduct evaluations on those systems because its program is likely to transition to other projects, such as improvements to various aspects of those fab systems. Semiconductor companies involved in I300 have set a goal to have a full set of tools for 300-mm evaluated by mid-1999, but that does not now seem possible. If that time frame is pushed back, then so will their pilot lines and development fabs, Robertson suggested. Just as troubling, evaluated 300-mm tools are falling short of performance goals in processing capability, throughput, and reliability Robertson said tools have averaged 43% in a performance metrics being used by Sematech to evaluate the 300-mm tools. The highest possible score would be 100%. "The tool set is far from being ready," he said. "Now we anticipate most of the tools will be available by the end of 1999, with alpha [initial engineering prototype] tools for copper and low-k dielectric interconnect processing," Robertson said. If those systems are ready, chip makers will then be willing to begin placing orders for pilot line production with volume ramps now slated for 2002-2003.