Future Horizons has won a commission from the EC to evaluate the setting up of a 450mm pilot line in Europe.
“Manufacturing is back on the European agenda,” Future Horizons’ CEO Malcolm Penn told EW, “the collapse of the financial sector, and the example of Germany as Europe’s strongest economy based on manufacturing, has convinced the EC that manufacturing is important.”
Hence the brief to evaluate the possibility of a European-based development of 450mm technology.
With only six companies – all of them foreign (Intel, Samsung, TSMC, IBM, Toshiba and GloFo) – able to afford a 450mm fab, why should the European taxpayer even consider paying for 450mm development?
“If a 450mm fab was developed outside Europe that would be a big disadvantage for Europe’s laboratories, chip companies, equipment companies, materials companies and technology suppliers,” replied Penn.
With some components of the fab supply chain heading down to single-sourced supply, European suppliers will want to be the company which is supported for 450mm development.
Examples are the European companies ASMI and ASML. They are not the only sources of epitaxy and lithography – but they are in a fast-dwindling group of potential suppliers of 450mm epitaxy and lithpography equipment.
Asked why 450mm is worth doing when SEMI, the trade body for semiconductor manufacturing equipment, says it will not be cost effective, Penn replied: “They would say that wouldn’t they? Because their members are making money out of 300mm equipment, and because they can produce all the processes down to the end of silicon on 300mm, and because the chip industry is not going to pay them for doing it.”
Why shouldn’t Intel, the most vocal proponent of 450mm and with a $40bn revenue business, pay for 450mm development?
“Even for a $40bn company it’s too high a risk,” said Penn.
Future Horizons is joined in the evaluation study by the French analyst company DECISION.