Monday, July 20, 2009
With many chip companies and their suppliers fighting for their lives amidst a brutal industry downturn, the migration to 450-mm wafers—and the enormous R&D costs it will take to get there—can wait, according to executives from several foundries speaking at a Semicon West event here Tuesday (July 14).
Intel Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. are pushing for a move to 450-mm wafers and want 450-mm prototype fabs by 2012. Many in the chip industry believe this timeframe is unrealistic. Some people believe that 450-mm will never happen due to the investment that would be required.
Thomas Sonderman, vice president of manufacturing systems and technology at GlobalFoundries Inc., said he found it interesting that some companies are pushing for a move to 450-mm while the industry is mired in a painful downturn.
"In my view, that's just an admission that they've run out of options for making their fabs more effective," Sonderman said.
Sonderman's comments echoed those he made in a statement issued earlier Tuesday. GlobalFoundries (Sunnyvale, Calif.) was created by the spinout of AMD's manufacturing operations and to date has only one customer: AMD. His anti-450-mm comments might easily be construed as a simple dig against competitors.
Except that Sonderman is hardly alone in the semiconductor industry, particularly among capital equipment executives. In the early part of the decade, chip equipment makers complained that they were forced to bear the brunt of R&D costs for the migration to the 300-mm wafer size in the late 1990s, only to be left holding the bag in 2001-2002 when a major downturn hit and chipmakers stopped buying tools.
Others on the panel, including executives from Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. and China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. (SMIC), appeared to agree with Sonderman.
Another panelist, Daniel Armbrust, vice president of 300-mm semiconductor operations at IBM's Systems and Technology Group, said afterward that, given the high level of investment that will be required to ready 450-mm equipment, it makes more sense to continue pushing 300-mm for the time being, especially given the downturn.
"There will be a time when 450-mm makes sense," Armbrust said.
By: DocMemory
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