14 DAY TRIAL // Just a month after the European Commission decided to investigate the benefits of establishing a 450mm semiconductor prototype foundry in the EU, leading chip makers in the region have started to express their concern regarding Europe's role in this market and its contribution to 450mm wafer technology research and deployment.
As EETimes reports, a panel made up of NXP, X-Fab, Lfoundry, STMicroelectronics and Globalfoundries revealed their concerns at the Industry Strategy Symposium held in Grenoble, France, the past week.
Most of the panelists suggested that spending tax-payers' money on 450-mm wafer research was not in their best interest as it could diminish the funding and support received for the development of mixed-signal, RF, MEMS and other specialty CMOS technologies.
According Rutger Wijburg, vice president of front-end operations for NXP Semiconductors, the transition to 450mm wafer manufacturing could cause the whole industry to collapse to only three manufacturers as only companies with deep pockets can afford to pay for the required equipment.
In addition, Jean-Marc Chery, chief technology officer of STMicroelectronics, said that there are some other technologies that have to be perfected before the switch to 450mm wafers should be considered.
“Today the challenge is the next CMOS platform and do we want to compete in the mobile Internet. If 'yes' then down to 10-nm node 300-mm wafers are competitive.
“FinFET [fin-shaped transistors] or FDSOI [fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator] is the first challenge.
“Then the choice of lithography and lithography is half the capex. Before we go to 450-mm we have to answer these fundamental questions,” said Mr. Chery.
Finally, he concluded that if Europe decided to research both 450mm wafers and mixed-signal, RF and MEMS, it would fail at both.
The move to 450mm could allow semiconductor manufacturers to maximize their chip yields, leading to a decrease in production costs, but equipment suppliers have been reluctant to develop the tools needed for the transition to 450mm wafers as they still haven't managed to get the profit they anticipated from the switch to 300mm.