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To: Curlton Latts who wrote (20363)	12/9/1998 4:34:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Taiwanese fab has two .18 micron scanners, and a .15 micron Nikon scanner on order. Now the other fabs need to add more equipment to stay competitive............. eet.com Taiwan's third fab begins ramp By Mark Carroll EE Times (12/09/98, 1:58 p.m. EDT) HSINCHU, Taiwan — Starting as a small-but potentially potent-third foundry here, Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. has opened its mask-production department for business. WSMC's intitial capacity will be about 7,000 wafers a month. Besides in-house mask-production capability, WSMC also offers access to IP libraries from Avant! and Toshiba and from its self-created libraries. It starts out with two 0.18-micron lithography tools, one more than either Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) or United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). "At this time we currently have two 0.18-micron scanners operational," said Richard Chang, president of WSMC. "TSMC and UMC only have one apiece. We also have a 0.15-micron Nikon scanner on order. This level of process equipment is still hard to get and the delivery time is currently about nine months." Toshiba is a technology partner with WSMC, not a joint-venture partner. "We use Toshiba technology for our below-quarter-micron SRAM. We also use Toshiba technology for our DRAM, which is quarter-micron but utilizes 0.18-micron gates. The 0.18-micron gates make for a much-faster DRAM," said Chang. WSMC is making DRAM, he said, using a U.S. customer's 0.21-micron technology, producing both 64- and 128-Mbit parts for the customer, which Chang declined to name. DRAM debug Chang said WSMC engineers have developed a first-rate statistical process control (SPC). "Since we are a new fab, we can regulate our SPC very well. Above 1.3 is very good which is what we currently are at. Below 0.9 is pretty bad. It is mostly a problem of monitoring the steppers and implanters." WSMC is using DRAM to debug the new fab. "We currently are about 100 percent loaded," said Chang. "A lot of those wafers, however, are test or prototype wafers. We are ramping up by 2,000 to 3,000 wafers per month in our first fab. By the end of 1999 we expect our fab 1 to be fully loaded at about 33,000 wafers per month." WSMC has a second fab shell constructed. Chang said that he will begin to load equipment into that facility in the second half of 1999 and continue to the first half of 2000 "as the market allows." This second fab will be large enough to produce another 30,000 wafers per month. The question is whether Taiwan needs another foundry hereor if the industry can support it. At least one analyst gives WSMC a chance. Don Floyd, analyst for ING Barings-in Taipei,said projections from Dataquest put the IC industry at about $500 billion to $1 trillion by 2010. Chang said WSMC can fab mixed-signal products down to 0.2 micron, logic and SRAM to quarter micron and DRAM to 0.21 micron. "WSMC now is checking out who has interesting technology," said Floyd. WSMC's ability to buy the latest in equipment is another plus. "We continue to buy only equipment that can manufacture down to 0.18 micron," said Chang. "By the end of this year we will be producing 6,000 wafers per month that were made at 0.18 micron." Floyd said that WSMC's core of employees is experienced. "Chang has a good team behind him that he's assembled from all around," he said. Chang ramped up six fabs in the 20 years he worked at Texas Instruments Inc. And though he has ramped up two fabs in Taiwan, one in Singapore and one in Italy for TI, Chang said he hopes to stay at WSMC. "I asked my boss to let me have this fab for myself to run for awhile," Chang said.