semicon west overview A changing landscape
The annual Semicon West show in San Francisco was dominated by news about 45Omm and the future of lithography. Despite concerns of the future for many in the industry David Ridsdale found that although financial dynamics have changed, Moore’s Law continues to direct industry goals and aspirations.
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an Francisco once again hosted the annual Semicon West conference and exhibition and although organisers highlighted the increase in booths, they down played the reduction in companies attending despite 51 new players joining the show. As the conference is co-located with Intersolar it is also hard to get a handle on the number attending. SEMI was hoping for 31,000 but post show figures suggest a couple of thousand shy of this. As registration to one show included the other it becomes difficult to determine the true level of attendance. The benefit for the two shows is that everywhere looks busy which helps set a mood at any such event.
Despite an impressive array of speakers and pre-planned events the show was immediately overshadowed by the announcement that Intel was investing as much as US$ 4.1 Billion into ASML to accelerate research and development into EUV and 450mm as the company scales towards its 14nm goals while moving to the larger 450 mm wafer size. Intel will spend an initial US$ 3.1 Billion for up to a 15 % stake in the company and add another billion to the R&D pot at ASML. Whilst most pundits are applauding Intel for their shrewd investment I feel it is ASML who has led a game changing coup.
The semiconductor industry began the transition to 300 mm wafers 14 years ago although some will say dragged to the transition. Some companies have announced they are only now seeing a return on investment and of course many companies saw no return if they survived at all. The transition to 300mm was the time when manufacturers pushed upstream price pressures down to tool and materials suppliers. It was the main reason that many companies began to complain when 450mm was first raised a few years ago. The initial public response from toolmakers was they would not foot the bill for the 450mm transition whilst privately stating that they expected the 450mm transition to occur regardless of what they thought.
This is exactly what has been happening. The major IC manufacturers began to talk of future plans and road maps and suddenly companies
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www.siliconsemiconductor.net Issue III 2012
began to work on 450mm projects. That or be left out of the loop. A number of pilot lines began to be mooted and some built and the momentum was with the industry. Except ASML who chose to only talk about the evolving Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography and insisted they were not looking at 450mm stating they could not work on both projects.
Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable that any tool company could exert the influence over its customers that ASML has demonstrated with this pro-active investment from Intel and now Samsung and TSMC have followed suit. Ten years ago it would have been unlikely that a company focusing on one area of technology would be the biggest tool
manufacturer in the world. In fact ten years ago ASML was barely in the top three lithographers
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