Advanced IC packaging, such as fan-out WLP (Wafer Level Packaging) and 2.5D TSV (Through Silicon Via) will drive the packaging equipment market, particularly lithography. This will help specific equipment manufacturers in 2019, since the WFE (Wafer Front End) market will drop 17%. But the Back-End lithography market, led … Read More
Samsung Foundry recently held their 4th annual technology forum in Santa Clara. This article reviews the highlights of the presentations. There were two prevalent themes throughout – focused execution on the current process roadmap, and the introduction of the 3nm process node features and schedule.
Before getting into … Read More
Last week we warned of a further down leg due to China trade. We were surprised how quickly our prediction came true as it appears we are now in the midst of giving back all the upside built in to stocks based on a peaceful resolution of the trade conflict which obviously isn’t happening.
Many of the semi stocks we cover were down… Read More
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference Imec presented several papers on EUV and Veeco presented about etching for EUV masks. I had the opportunity to see the presentations and speak with some of the authors. In this article I will summarize the key issues around EUV based on this research.
EUV is ramping up into high volume 7nm… Read More
It’s no coincidence that the TSMC Symposium is right after the Q1 earnings call. This will allow TSMC to talk more freely and they certainly will, my opinion. It is a very interesting time in the semiconductor industry and TSMC, being the bellwether, can tell us what will happen the rest of the year and give us some 2020 insights.… Read More
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference ASML gave an update on both the current 0.33NA system and the 0.55 high-NA system development. I saw the presentations and got to sit down with Mike Lercel (Director of Strategic Marketing).… Read More
Strong Overall Market Growth but a Slowdown Looms
After six years of single digit percentage growth in the overall semiconductor market, 2017 saw almost 22% growth and 2018 year-to-date is up roughly 17% (based on numbers published by the world semiconductor trade statistics). The big growth driver the last two years has been … Read More
The semiconductor foundry business has gone through a dynamic transformation over the last 30 years. In the beginning the foundries were several process nodes behind the IDMs with little hope of catching up. Today the foundries are leading the process development race at 10nm – 7nm, and will continue to do so, absolutely.… Read More
At IEDM last week Anthony (Tony) Yen, Vice President and Head, Technology Development Centers Worldwide for ASML presented a paper entitled “EUV Lithography at Threshold of High-Volume Manufacturing” authored by Anthony Yen, Hans Meiling, and Jos Benschop. At IEDM I had a chance to sit down with Tony and discuss the paper and … Read More
Semiconductor equipment vendor ranking, which didn’t change much between 2016 and 2017, is undergoing a makeover, as Lam Research, ASML, and Tokyo Electron (TEL) are switching places and top-ranked Applied Materials is getting closer to losing its number one ranking.
Since the 1990s, Applied Materials has been the market leader… Read More
