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Leading chipmakers to team up
Leading chipmakers have agreed to collaborate in the transition to new manufacturing methods - a step that is aimed at lowering development costs and speeding up technology migration but that is likely to leave smaller rivals behind.
- By Kathrin Hilleand Song Jung-a, Financial Times
- Published: 23:56 May 9, 2008
Taipei/Seoul: Leading chipmakers have agreed to collaborate in the transition to new manufacturing methods - a step that is aimed at lowering development costs and speeding up technology migration but that is likely to leave smaller rivals behind.
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, Samsung, the largest maker of memory chips, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), the largest contract chipmaker by output, are collaborating in the move, which concerns the use of silicon wafers that are 450 milimetre in diameter. The companies said they would try to have a pilot running by 2012.
The memory part of the industry is undergoing one of its worst downturns and is under pressure to consolidate. Industry experts question whether transition to newer generations of technology can be continued indefinitely.
Most chipmakers cut their semiconductors from wafers that measure 300 milimetre in diameter.
This technology, ramped up since 2001, has almost completely replaced the previous generation, which used 200 milimetre wafers.
Each new generation aims to increase manufacturing efficiency and cut costs by allowing more chips to be cut out of each wafer.
But developing the equipment and building fabrication plants, or "fabs", is ever more expensive and increasingly few companies can afford the transition at every level.
Rick Hsu, an analyst with Nomura in Taipei, said that the cost of building a 450 milimetre fab would probably exceed $6 billion.
"That means that except for Intel, Samsung and TSM, very few [manufacturers] will actually be able to follow," he said.
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