Intel Corp (INTC)

[SemiconEng]

AUSTIN, Texas -- Intel Corp. dropped a bomb on the lithography industry, informing its suppliers that it has removed the 157-nanometer lithography generation from its road map. Peter Silverman, director of lithography capital equipment, said Intel will extend the 193-nm tools for the 45-nm node coming into production in 2007, where 157-nm tools were expected to play a role.

It's been a really long time (>5 years) since I "Did Any Litho", but this is the first time I've heard of intel moving away from the 157nm tools. I still know some people in the "Litho Circle", a friend of mine use to work for SVGL before it was a subsidiary of ASML. I even visited their Manufacturing facilities in Connecticut a few years back. Ahhhhh those were the days.....

Everyone has been really tight lipped about anything sub 90nm process, but I had heard that there were "Significant Lens Issues" with the tools. Maybe the Calcium Floride issue is what they were talking about.

As far as intel is concerned, I recall that there was speculation that intel used quite a bit of Phase Shifting when they were trying to extend CuMine at the end of it's life, so they should have quite a bit of experience doing that. The costs of Phase Shifting may be higher, due to having to expose the die twice, which also cuts the throughput, as well as the higher costs of the Masks, but I believe that I read somewhere (Can't find It) that intel makes their own masks, so they should have quite a bit of past experience with that too, and I would guess that making the Masks themselves would reduce the costs. I haven't seen too much that you can do about the throughput issue this early in the tool development, except Buy More Tools. I haven't seen throughput numbers on the next generation steppers.

My guess is, intel probably had a couple of the steppers installed somewhere, and either the Critical Dimensions weren't meeting expectations, or the Sustaining costs of achieving those CD's were too far outside the financial and/or throughput parameters.

JMO

Semi