Chinese foundry SMIC is continuing to equip its 300mm fab, and is reportedly pulling in its ramp from Q1 2006 to Q4 of this year.

Two different tool vendors, Fremont, Calif.-based Mattson Technology Inc., and Austrian tool vendor SEZ Group, both said today that they had recently shipped tools to a 300mm fab in China. While neither company identified the customer ¨C a common practice in the chip industry ¨C its common knowledge that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is the only Chinese chipmaker to be in the process of currently equipping and ramping a 300mm fab.

Furthermore, in a research note today on the business of U.S. silicon wafer supplier MEMC Electronic Materials, Lehman Brothers financial analyst Ted Parmigiani said that SMIC ¨C a customer of MEMC ¨C was pulling in its 300mm ramp by one quarter. Incidentally, he also reported in his research note that MEMC had managed recent price negotiations quite well; it scored its best price negations since 2000.

For its part Mattson said the initial toolset shipped to the Chinese customer included the Aspen III ICPHT system, slated for the "chipmaker's newest 300 mm copper fab" for back-end-of-line (BEOL) strip applications. Mattson said it has also shipped an enhanced version of its Aspen III Highlands, for the foundry's metal interconnect process line to produce copper/low-k logic devices.

Another Aspen III ICPHT strip system is scheduled to ship at the end of this month to the same customer's front-end-of-line (FEOL) 300mm fab, where Mattson's Aspen III Strip system is already installed and in production, the company said.

Meanwhile, SEZ said the sale of its single wafer Da Vinci wafer cleaning system marked its first 300mm tool in China. The "leading Chinese foundry" bought and installed the tool last month, SEZ said. The sale also marks SEZ's 20th tool to be installed in China, the company said.

SMIC's equipping and ramp of its 300mm fab has also dominated headlines in the business press lately, particularly in Asia. The foundry has pursued a loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for fab equipment, but a bank official said earlier this month that it is not considering the loan any time in the near future. SMIC supplier Applied Materials Inc. had lobbied for the loan, but U.S. chipmaker Micron had lobbied against it, according to a number of news reports.

The news prompted many industry watchers to speculate that if SMIC doesn't get the loan to purchase equipment from U.S. suppliers, it may turn to other sources of funding and suppliers, namely Japanese giant Tokyo Electron Ltd., the no. 2 supplier of process equipment behind Applied.

By: DocMemory
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