The whole 450mm wafer thing is a puzzle. Last week at IEF 2010, there was TSMC's CTO Jack Sun, saying he wanted and expected 450mm to happen while, listening to him in the audience, was Heinz Kundert, European CEO of SEMI whose members make the chip manufacturing equipment, who said later: "We don't want it."
The largest equipment maker of them all, Applied, has publicly said it's doing nothing about 450mm.
SEMI has done research which suggests 450mm may not achieve much in the way of cost reduction, which is the whole point of the $20 billion exercise.
Most of the equipment industry feel they haven't yet had a return on the development cost of 300mm.
And, of all the device makers, only TSMC, Intel and Samsung have announced they want 450mm.
But none of them wants to pay for it.
Asked how much TSMC is contributing to developing 450mm, Sun waffled: "The device manufacturers and governments all have to pitch in and contribute to the effort. People will find a way to invest so that we can deliver 450mm."
And I have to say I ran into Laurent Bosson who, as ST's former fab boss, knows more than anyone about manufacturing wafers, who said he thought the Chinese might make the 450mm equipment.
If the China government leads 450mm development, as the German government led the funding of 300mm development, and IBM led 200mm development, then there's a chance this thing might get funded..
But Chinese involvement is a long shot.
Meanwhile, what's going on? How can SEMI and TSMC have such diametrically opposed views on this subject?
Isn't there any contact between the constituent parts of the industry about 450mm?
Or is there contact, but structural disagreement?
Leave a comment