EDITOR'S PAGE

Hitting the trifecta

As I write this column, it's been six weeks since Semicon West, and my content digestive track is still out of whack. This year's show hit the industry trifecta. There was great traffic on the show floor, with SEMI reporting more than 65,000 registered attendees visiting the booths of 1784 companies in San Francisco and San Jose. White-hot market conditions contributed to the euphoria, with some analyst predictions for the equipment sector creeping deep into double-digit-percentage growth territory. Exciting technology and business model innovations could be found throughout the halls, with everyone from the small component and subsystem suppliers to the industry giants gleefully strutting their stuff.

Rather than attempt to analyze the myriad show-related news, views, and hues, I'd like to offer some observational tidbits.

• Be careful what you wish for. After a couple of years of touting the necessity of "critical mass" in the equipment market, Brad Mattson pulled off the merger of his company with CFM Technologies and Steag's semiconductor equipment unit a few weeks before the show. With the deep-pocketed Germans controlling nearly a third of his company, could Brad's fervent wish to be one of the "big boys" backfire in a blaze of backroom power brokering? Maybe not, but some industry mavens will have their eyes and ears closely attuned to developments in the Mattson camp.
  
  
• Back from the brink. Not too long ago, Trikon Technologies was given up for dead by many in the industry. Their re-emergence as a well-run, profitable company and a deposition technology leader show there is life in the small-to-medium tool company segment.
  
  
• Tool launch hoopla. Applied Materials and Novellus share honors for making the most noise during their respective equipment launches. You could call Applied's massive 300-mm tool introduction either a 21-gun salute or blackjack, while Novellus's champagne-fueled kickoff of the Vector platform—with smoke machines, techno-music throb, and faux drama in front of hordes of analysts and editors—would not have been out of place at a political rally or auto show.
  
  
• Fresh legs. An interesting example of an existing service paradigm getting fresh legs in another chip-manufacturing sector is Ion Implant Services' "insourcing" model. Reminiscent of fabwide gas and chemical management programs run by such materials giants as Air Products and Air Liquide, the IIS model moves the outsourced implantation leader's services back to the customer's house, taking ownership of the implanters in the fab itself. Their first customer, Sipex, says they will save both money and time by adopting implant insourcing.
  
  
• Story within the story. Sipex's new 6-in. facility in Milpitas, CA, is a story in itself, a bucking of the foundry trend by a small player in the analog chip realm. Yener Gurler, senior vp of operations, claims that the decision to "control our own destiny" will allow his company to match Asian foundry yields and even beat their prices.
  
  
• Buzzwords aplenty. No Semicon would be complete without the incessant hum of buzzwords. My picks for the loudest ones this year are "supply chain management" (especially those Internet-enabled approaches) and "integrated metrology," where measurement modules join in the cluster-tool fun.
  
  
• Holy grails, in search of. The industry has no shortage of holy grails, but this year I heard a few, in different forms, on the show floor: the ability to accurately correlate defect information to back-end test data, and the deep desire to close the control loop and achieve true, real-time, on-the-fly modifications in the tools.
  
  
• Show quotes. Regarding the rapid ramp to 300-mm production, Tegal's head honcho Mike Parodi said from his seat on a panel of executives: "There are failure mechanisms out there for which we have no names." Vahe Sarkissian, president and CEO of metrology tool supplier FEI, described his company's focus: "We're in the toothache business. We try and prevent tooth decay."

Tom Cheyney
Editor

tom.cheyney@cancom.com
http://www.micromagazine.com

MicroHome | Search | Current Issue | MicroArchives
Buyers Guide | Media Kit