SEMATECH News

Predictions of Industry Recovery, Productivity Improvement Highlight ISMI Symposium

Austin, TX (27 October 2009) —Semiconductors may be better positioned than most other industries to weather the severe recession and emerge into a recovery driven by innovative products, according to key speakers at the 6th ISMI Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness, which concluded last week.

The symposium, which attracted several hundred attendees despite lean travel budgets worldwide, addressed leading productivity trends with presentations from more than 60 industry professionals. The gathering also included updates of ISMI’s strategy to aid the industry’s transition to 450mm wafers and the Next Generation Factory (NGF).

Industry economics dominated the symposium, beginning with economist Angelos Angelou’s prediction of a cautious recovery that will be globally inspired rather than American-led. 

“The U.S. economy will slowly recover, but it will be a painful process,” Angelou noted. Health care reform that brings millions of Americans into the system could be “the greatest stimulus our economy has ever seen. Imagine 50 million (currently) uninsured people going to the doctor every time they need to,” he said.

Angelou added that growth in renewable energy, reduced interest rates and greater tax credits for capital-intensive industries would help mitigate the worst downturn since the Depression of the 1930s. “When this is over, I hope it will have taught us about avoiding financial excesses,” he said.

A brighter picture for the industry was painted by Jim Feldhan of Semico Research, who predicted a chip industry upturn driven by innovation and technology, especially in consumer products.

“People will spend money on electronics when they won’t spend on washing machines and refrigerators,” Feldhan said, forecasting a “nice recovery” for the industry as 2010 brings a 20 percent growth in revenues.

Over the next three years the chip industry will be driven by new demand for home electronics, biomedical products, wireless applications, green technology, and devices for automobiles that will be snapped up in both developed and emerging countries, Feldhan said.. Growth in social media will drive demand for high-end servers, he added.

Fed by better sales, semiconductor companies also can increase their odds of success by outsourcing portions of their manufacturing to specialized producers, according to Dave Bergeron, Chief Technology Officer of SVTC Technologies. Bergeron outlined a “shared services model” in which chip-makers could turn to foundry-type organizations for everything from research and design to test and assembly.

For example, he said SVTC offers development and pilot production services that are less costly than keeping such work in-house.  “The economic pressure is here to stay,” Bergeron told attendees. “Your business model needs to change to reflect marketplace realities by turning fixed costs into variable costs.”

On a broader scale, analyst Dan Hutcheson of weSRCH.com laid out a “snapback” strategy for reversing the flow of U.S. manufacturing to offshore producers. That strategy includes:

  • A weaker dollar that actually makes American products less expensive overseas
  • An increase in global regulations, standards, and branding of electronics
  • Redirecting emphasis on quality instead of price
  • Restructuring of the U.S. tax and financial system to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing, and discourage outsourcing

“Since 1960, most of our jobs have moved to services,” Hutcheson said. “The problem is, who buys government, medical or legal services from America? We have to turn this economy around and restore manufacturing, or America won’t be a dominant power.”

Any economic turnaround will necessitate a chip industry with advanced manufacturing capabilities, and ISMI demonstrated its role in that quest with a two-part update on its fab transition strategy. ISMI’s Tom Jefferson reported that test wafer generation and metrology have been major focus areas for the 450mm Program, with initial metrology tools installed and operational. More than three hundred 450mm wafers in the program’s wafer bank are available to metrology and equipment suppliers, he noted.

Jefferson said the program also has begun development of a common equipment demonstration testing methodology and guidelines for a 450mm equipment platform, while undertaking aggressive efforts in environmental protection. “We know there are a lot of challenges left to develop a 450mm infrastructure for the advanced  technology nodes,” he said. “ISMI will continue to engage with suppliers to accomplish this.”

On the 300mm side, Olaf Rothe of ISMI’s Next Generation Factory (NGF) Program said anticipated demand for chips in the next few years will demand a doubling of current 300mm capacity. “The importance of this program is to improve productivity of (existing) factories,” Rothe said. He also urged chip-makers and suppliers to collaborate in establishing infrastructure for NGF.

Rothe said the program has learned that Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) is a requirement for NGF data collection, and has confirmed EDA capability for a wide set of applications. “Productivity improvements require transformation of data into information and knowledge,” he said.

Other Symposium highlights included:

  • An expert panel of environment, health and safety (ESH) managers that ranked the need to reduce fab energy consumption – even as tools get larger – among the industry’s major challenges. Collaboration is one answer,” said Bruce Klafter, director of Global EHS and Applied Materials. “But we need a different model for engaging with small and medium-sized companies – they don’t have time and resources to participate effectively.” However, panel moderator James Beasley of ISMI pointed out that ISMI’s Environment, Safety & Health (ESH) Technology Center in Austin “could be a nexus” for supplier involvement. “We are we are inviting suppliers of all sizes into the technology center, and they are discovering that pre competitive collaboration moves things along.”

    The panel also identified regulatory initiatives related to critical process materials as a continuing focus for the industry. “We are forever looking for the right chemicals as we cope with regulations and standards” such as REACH and ROHS, said Tim Higgs, an environmental engineer at Intel. He urged the industry to develop reliable sources for critical materials. “We need to make our products from parts of the world where there are no civil wars going on,” he said. Also participating in the panel were Arthur Chuang, director of TSMC’s New Fab Planning & Engineering Division, and Aaron Zude, senior EHS director at SEMI.

  • The feasibility of using 300 mm tools for 3D interconnect with through-silicon vias (TSVs) was described by Andy Rudack, 3D Interconnect Metrology Engineer at SEMATECH. The process he described uses a bonded wafer pair (BWP) in which a target 300 mm wafer is adhered atop a carrier wafer, then thinned and trimmed. SEMATECH’s 3D team found that BWPs can be used safely with new-generation front-opening unified pods (FOUPs), but require adjustments in tool loadports, along with other equipment modifications. BWPs also fall outside some parameters of SEMI’s M1-15 wafer standard, which Rudack said was written for single wafers. “The standard, and all other SEMI standards that reference SEMI m1-15, need to be updated to reflect bonded wafer pairs,” he said.

The ISMI Symposium seeks to share information and methodologies for increasing productivity and reducing manufacturing expenses through advances in equipment, processes, resources, fab design, and manufacturing methods. The next ISMI Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness will be held in November 2010 in Austin.