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Semicon's "Sunday panel" predicts litho market split







Peter Clarke
Silicon Strategies
(07/22/2002 9:20 AM EDT)

SAN FRANCISCO -- A panel of experts that met on Sunday (July 21) at the Fairmont Hotel, predicted a splitting of the lithography equipment market into two parts; one to address the large volume, large area chips such as DRAMs and leading computer microprocessors, and another to address other chip types and applications.

The "Next Generation Lithography panel" was convened ahead of the opening of the Semicon West exhibition and conference Monday (July 22).

It was panelist Arthur Zafiropoulo, chairman and CEO of Ultratech Stepper Inc., who first raised the prospect of a bifurcation of lithography equipment into two distinct types. However, he was generally supported in his prediction by other panelists.

"The industry will bifurcate over the next two or three years," said Zafiropoulo, arguing that DRAMs and microprocessors with their large die areas, smallest minimum geometries and emphasis on throughput, need a different type of lithography to other devices. Zafiropoulo also argued that working with a small fixed illumination field size could bring benefits to chip makers working on small die.

Tom Long, group vice president of process analysis at KLA Tencor Inc., did not disagree with Zafiropoulo but pointed out that the requirements of system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs can be just as aggressive as microprocessor and DRAM -- begging the question: would lithography market merely split along the lines of leading- and trailing-edge users?

Dan Del Rosario, CEO of Photoronics coined, an analogy to try and shed more light on the lihtography issue. He pointed out that in human development once the top speed of travel had reached about 500 miles per hour, very few people needed to, or could afford to pay the premium to travel faster. Hence supersonic flight has never become a mainstream activity, being reserved for the military and some celebrities on Concorde. But sub-sonic air travel continues to develop for the masses.

Fellow panelist Buno Pati, president and CEO of Numerical Technologies Inc., brought the high-flying panel back to earth with the reminder: "For sure; it's not a god-given right to be able to fabricate your design at the next process technology node."











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