Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Which vendors won the latest chip-equipment orders at Chinese silicon foundry provider Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC)?
Applied Materials, Axcelis, Lam, Mattson, Novellus and Varian appear to be the winners for orders within SMIC’s new Fab 6c plant in Beijing, according to a report from Piper Jaffray & Co., an investment banking firm.
The Fab 6c plant is situated near SMIC’s initial 300-mm fab in Beijing, dubbed Fab 4, which produces DRAMs based on 110- and 100-nm technologies. The 6c facility is a 300-mm back-end-of-line (BEOL) plant that exclusively provides copper interconnect technologies for chips at 130-nm and below.
One of the big winners at SMIC’s Fab 6c plant is reportedly Applied Materials Inc. “Applied is in close negotiations with SMIC for its Fab 6c expansion for 2006 and expects a large size of packaged orders before October,” said C. William Lu, who watches the fab-tool industry for the firm.
Applied and Lam Research Corp. reportedly have the upper hand for the oxide-etch tool business in Fab 6c. “Lam had good market share in SMIC Fab 4, splitting positions with Applied, and gaining market share in oxide etch at Fab 6c,” Lu said. “We believe Lam is likely to increase its etch market share at Fab 6c to more than 60 percent from zero for the next phase of capacity expansion.”
Applied and Novellus Systems Inc. have reportedly taken a chuck of the chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD) and electro-chemical plating (ECP) business within Fab 6c.
“Novellus’ PVD penetration at SMIC is stalled; it unlikely to gain any market share in Fab 6c,” Lu said. “Novellus has penetrated certain CVD applications, but lost the low-k [business] to Applied. Applied's SlimCell ECP has also penetrated SMIC Fab 6c and is splitting the business with Novellus.”
There are other winners as well. “We believe Mattson is solid in securing its dry strip position at SMIC as it replaces Novellus for Fab 6c,” he said.
“We believe Axcelis has won some RTP business at SMIC replacing Applied, but its implant tool has not penetrated SMIC,” he said. “SMIC implant business is split between Varian and Applied, with Varian having higher market share as SMIC 300-mm tool sets were set up for memory applications.”
By: DocMemory
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