CGMG Sees Slow Growth
The Chemicals and Gases Manufacturers Group (CGMG) held its general meeting at SEMICON West, and several presenters considered leaders in their respective fields were invited to give their views on markets and technology.
Alexander Braun, Senior Editor -- Semiconductor International, 7/17/2008 11:15:00 AM
The Chemicals and Gases Manufacturers Group (CGMG) held its general meeting at SEMICON West, and several presenters considered leaders in their respective fields were invited to give their views on markets and technology.
Risto Puhakka, president of VLSI Research (Santa Clara, Calif.), said that the economy’s uncertainty could probably change, by August, anything he had to say now. “Discussions that we have held at VLSI lead us to think that we’re seeing indications of the beginning of a turnaround, especially in the memory and DRAM side of the market,” he said. According to Puhakka, the macro economy events — mainly the banking problems and the sluggish GDP — will trickle down to the industry and have negative effects through the remainder of the year. “Everything is in flux,” he added.
Puhakka proceeded, however, to try to assess where the industry is today and risked a look ahead. “Even though our industry projections do not take materials and gases into consideration, I can give you an idea of where we are today,” he said. He then indicated that he expects the electronics sector to grow by ~5%, which he did not view as bad, but not as good either. Looking at the industry’s expansion, Puhakka said they viewed IC growth at 6% and displays at 9%. “On the equipment side, we see -16% and it could reach down to -20%. Predictions, particularly from the larger equipment companies, reveal a negative outlook.”
On the positive side, display manufacturing equipment is clearly on a 20% growth track this year; however, Puhakka reminded his audience that the past two years were very negative years for the display market, and that this part of the business is now undergoing its cyclical uptime. The critical subsystem market, mostly front-end equipment, is heavily dependent on processing equipment, and the prediction was for it to remain at about -10% for the rest of 2008.
Looking at long-term trends, the industry hasn’t changed our outlook. The industry is capturing 7-9% growth rates. Fundamentally, that is driven by a couple of factors. Unit sales are steadily growing, although they are slowing right now. Semiconductor units for the past five years have experienced a growth rate of 10%. This year it is expected to be 8 or 9%.
John Housely, a partner at Techcet Group (Los Gatos, Calif.), predicted that what he termed as “the cost of earth, wind and fire” would continue to increase, pointing out that SEMI materials suppliers were unable to control this, and that these costs would be passed on by IDMs and foundries, creating a push-pull relationship between suppliers and customers. As a consolation, he added that during the worst years the world almost always consumes more silicon than the year before.
Housely thinks that the cost of precious metals will continue to go up, as will petroleum-based chemicals and carriers, such as FOUPs. “The cost of developing and implementing new materials is skyrocketing further with each generation,” he said, and he wonders whether customers will be willing to continue to pay for it. He did not care to speculate what a move to 450 mm wafers would mean to the costs of materials.
Reza Arghavani, Applied Materials Fellow, shared his thoughts about the transition to 32 nm and beyond. “Although it will be expensive, NA 1.2 immersion lithography will be ready.” Arghavani stated that he did not believe that there would be any destructive technologies at the 32 nm node. “There won’t be any new substrates,” he said, “or biaxial stress and double gates; rather, 32 nm will continue to use silicon, uniaxial stress and planar transistors.” He saw the challenge being the capability to integrate, deposit, polish pattern and etch highly conformal ultrathin new materials into the advanced pitches of the 32 nm node. As for the 22 nm node, he said that materials engineering would be the enabling key. “We’ll have to cope with strain, high-k/metal gate, copper/low-k interconnects and, above all, next-generation lithography with double patterning.”
Maggie Hershey, director of public policy for SEMI North America (San Jose) brought the audience up to date on the industry organization’s efforts in Washington, D.C.
