Take Advantage of the "New" Infrastructure
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 12/1/2000
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| Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief |
How things have changed! As described in this month's feature, "Suppliers' Application Labs: A Growing Resource," many equipment and materials suppliers have, in recent years, invested heavily to build up the capabilities of their "demo labs." Today, these labs — which could be described as "integration centers" — are equipped with enough tools to replicate a good chunk of process flow. Suppliers have supplemented those capabilities with the latest analytical tools.
By taking advantage of this new part of the equipment and materials supplier infrastructure, IC manufacturers are finding they can significantly lessen new process development time. A good example is Applied Materials' Equipment and Process Integration Center (EPIC) facility in Santa Clara, Calif. Opened in late 1998, EPIC has everything needed to develop and test integrated processes, including multi-level copper interconnects.
Last November at EPIC, Applied completed a demonstration of its integrated Copper Interconnect Process Modules with Mosel Vitelic Inc. (MVI), a manufacturer of memory chips in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The project was accomplished in less than 12 weeks and, according to MVI, resulted in chips functioning with a yield "comparable to aluminum." Applied says MVI felt that the process allowed them to quickly evaluate the technology without having to characterize each individual step, saving many months of development time.
Of course, not all suppliers have these types of resources, and many engineers still find it necessary to hand carry or ship wafers from one supplier to the next to test out everyone's capabilities. But alliances between suppliers continue to grow, and individual suppliers will continue to add to their own application labs, making it easier for an engineer to off-load more and more process development work to the supplier community.
A potential problem with this scenario is that the supplier community now makes these resources available free of charge, as a cost of doing business. That may be true, but it seems that if the costs were shared more freely, suppliers could add new capabilities more quickly and IC makers could, in turn, put new technologies into production even faster.
Another problem is that not everyone is taking advantage of this new resource. Why? Some may simply not be aware of the advanced capabilities many suppliers now have. This would surely be cured by a simple call to the supplier's sales department. What's troublesome is when companies are aware but choose not to take advantage because of some kind of leftover paranoia. It used to be that IC makers lived or died by their manufacturing prowess and were afraid to let even their own suppliers know what they were doing. But today that kind of thinking is ridiculous. Aside from the fact that most new advances in technology now originate within the supplier community, suppliers have proven they will honor any non-disclosure agreements.
Advanced application labs and integration centers are an important new aspect of the supplier infrastructure. Chipmakers should utilize them and also help support them financially to encourage growth. •
