"The 300-mm ramp will dominate the industry's efforts in production during the next five years," predicted Joel Monnier, corporate vice president and director of central R&D at STMicroelectronics, which soon plans to describe details of its first 300-mm pilot line in nearby Crolles, France. The Crolles 2 fab will select its 300-mm tool set in the middle of next year with installation expected at the end of 2001. Production will follow in late 2002, according to presentations at the forum, which was hosted by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI)trade group.

Monnier said the chip industry will focus much of its 300-mm efforts on engineering and integration of 0.13-micron processes with highly-automated tools during the next two to three years. Others agreed, noting that the industry-wide launch of 300-mm (12-inch) wafer processing was unprecedented.

The 200-mm generation gradually became the industry's workhorse for chip production in the 1990s, but "300-mm is more or less taking off like a flock of birds," observed Peter Kücker, program director for the Semiconductor300 joint-venture pilot line between Infineon Technologies AG and Motorola Inc. in Dresden, Germany.

Semiconductor managers speaking at the forum said 300-mm fab tools are now as good as today's new 200-mm equipment. That's good news, but it's also not great news because many chip managers also complained that today's new fab tools were not reliable or production ready when they are introduced by vendors, which are struggling to keep up with the accelerated pace of solid-state technology.

"It is not enough to get tools quickly to the marketplace. We need more reliability," urged Infineon's Kücker. During the early stages of the Semiconductor300 pilot line, many production tools were initially operating close to reliability targets, but when the tool sets were "stressed," the meantime between failures fell far below the goal of 80% reaching 100 hours MTBF, Kücker noted.

"Tool reliability is not as good as it could be," he said, referring to the two years it often takes to move new fab gear from alpha- and beta-site testing into full production use. "No one wants to buy a car that must use 100 gallons of gasoline to 'burned in' the vehicle like test wafers are used with fab equipment," Kücker said. "If you were told the engine could be replaced after one year of driving, you wouldn't want to buy it."

Infineon is now confident that it has debugged its tool set, and it's moving ahead with plans to invest $1 billion in 300-mm volume production at its Dresden facility (see March 31 story). Infineon officials believe the Munich-based spinoff from Siemens AG is six months to a year ahead of other chip makers planning 300-mm production.

But other semiconductor companies are also pushing ahead with plans for early production by the end of 2001. Hitachi Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) are aiming to start pilot production in a new joint-venture company, called Trecenti Technology Inc., in Japan. Trecenti's fab will initially process 7,000 twelve-inch wafers a month, and it will be set up to be profitable at that capacity level, said Masahiko Ogirima, senior vice president of Hitachi.

Mass production--at 250 wafer starts per day--will begin to ramp in the second quarter of 2002, Ogirima told attendees at the fab forum. Single-wafer processing systems and emphasis on cycle-time reduction will enable the 300-mm fab to become profitable with 7,000 wafer starts a month, but the joint venture could add additional capacity--up to a total of 18,000 wafer starts a month--if market conditions justify the increase, he said.

The Hitachi-UMC joint venture fab will be set up in an empty plant building on Hitachi's campus in Hitachinaka-city, Japan, with an initial investment of 70 billion yen, or about $680 million (see Dec. 27 story). The 300-mm fab will be ramped with a 0.15-micron process, and its first phase will reach full production in the second half of 2002, said Ogirima. Equipment installation will begin in this summer, with initial pilot runs starting in the fourth quarter.

One concern weighing on the minds of chip companies planning to rump 300-mm production is the availability and cost of larger-diameter silicon substrates. Prices for 300-mm blank production wafers have fallen steadily in the past year to as low as $500-600 each (see April 6 story), but several semiconductor managers at the forum expressed concerns about costs going up, if all the new fab projects are soon launched.

"The industry must come up with a new model to enable the silicon wafer suppliers to become profitable while lowering the prices," urged Infineon's Kücker. At the forum and last week's Semicon Europa in Munich, recession-battered wafer suppliers certainly agreed.