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Escalating Costs to Drive Vast Improvements in Productivity, SEMATECH Technologist John Schmitz Predicts at SEMICON West

San Francisco, CA (13 July 2004) – The new economy for microelectronics – a daunting world of multibillion-dollar fabs and budget-wrenching technologies – will force semiconductor manufacturers to seek unprecedented levels of wafer productivity over the next five years, a top corporate officer for International SEMATECH told technologists here at SEMICON West.

Dr. John Schmitz, SEMATECH’s Chief Operating Officer for Manufacturing Operations and Technology, said economic pressures are driving the manufacturing creativity that by 2009 will push cycle time toward its theoretical limit, achieve near 100% die yield, create “plug-and-play” equipment that can be made operational in 24 hours, and reach other goals that seem almost impossible by current practices.

“Can we do it? I think we can get pretty close,” Schmitz told a panel discussion for journalists organized by the Loomis Group. “Fab automation will play an important role in helping us reach this performance.”

He added that e-manufacturing, with its powerful toolbox of advanced equipment control (AEC), advanced process control (APC) and remote diagnostics, coupled with vastly improved WIP control through automated material handling, automated scheduling and tool maintenance, will help turn distant productivity goals into reality.

Without these improvements, Schmitz said, the industry risks being overwhelmed by its rapidly escalating costs, which include technology R&D product cycles costs of more than $500 million per year; 300 mm wafer fabs priced at $2-$3 billion (with that cost increasing 15% annually); and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography development at $7.5 billion.

Schmitz was among several industry panelists who predicted how the chip world might look in 2009, a time span that will bring at least two new technology nodes, new dielectric materials, and rapidly developing exposure techniques such as 193 nm immersion and EUV. Other speakers and their prognoses included:

  • Paul van Attekum, senior vice president of marketing and technology for ASML, predicted another industry downturn in 2007, plus a shrinking of lithography equipment companies to only two (“one in the Netherlands”), and jokingly forecast a brand-new litho approach: “immersion EUV.”
  • Mary Puma, CEO of Axcelis Technologies, said the Asia/Pacific market will dominate the world in the manufacturing and consumption of electronics, and that “designing (chips) for price will become the mantra for successful semiconductor companies.”
  • Peter Podesser, CEO of the EV group, forecast the ascendancy of new materials such as strained silicon-on-insulator (SSOI) and silicon-germanium, and new architectures like 3-D interconnect. “SEMATECH’s awareness of 3-D makes us confident that this will be a fully enabled strategy,” he said.
  • Dave Hemker, vice president of new product development for Lam Research, envisioned low-k materials at the long-sought dielectric constant of 2.4 by 2009, along with “hybrid stacks” containing different constants at various levels and flexible etch equipment capable of handling both organic and inorganic materials.
  • Devon Kinkead, president and CEO of Extraction Systems, noted a trend among large IC manufacturers in making some of their key capital equipment investments “counter-cyclically,” in down markets, and so getting more for their money.
  • Jerry Cutini, president and CEO of Aviza Technology, said he could foresee China’s IC consumption exceeding that of all other geographic markets, leading global equipment and materials companies to put more resources and operations into China.
  • Sven Lofquist, president and CEO of Micronic Laser Systems, said that the key to equipment suppliers’ success in any market – established or emerging – is to listen to and understand the needs of local customers. Past ways of doing business won’t necessarily translate as companies begin doing business in new regions he noted.

Predictive presentations were followed by audience questions that included a query on why the semiconductor sector has not become automated as thoroughly as other industries. SEMATECH’s Schmitz replied that chip processes generate immense amounts of data that must be extracted and interpreted by complex algorithms and programming.

“This is not a simple task … it is extremely complex, but we are making progress,” he said.