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Intel Invests In ASML To Boost Extreme UV Lithography, 450mm Wafers
MrSeb writes "When Intel goes looking for new chip manufacturing technology to invest in, the company doesn't play for pennies. Chipzilla has announced a major investment and partial purchase of lithography equipment developer ASML. Intel has agreed to invest €829 million (~$1B USD) in ASML's R&D programs for EUV and 450mm wafer deployment, to purchase €1.7B worth of ASML shares ($2.1B USD, or roughly 10% of the total shares available) and to invest general R&D funds totaling €3.3B (~$4.1B USD). The goal is to bring 450mm wafer technology and extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) within reach despite the challenges facing both deployments. Moving to 450mm wafers is a transition Intel and TSMC have backed for years, while smaller foundries (including GlobalFoundries, UMC, and Chartered, when it existed as a separate entity) have dug in their heels against the shift — mostly because the shift costs an insane amount of money. It's effectively impossible to retrofit 300mm equipment for 450mm wafers, which makes shifting from one to the other extremely expensive. EUVL is a technology that's been percolating in the background for years, but the deployment time frame has slipped steadily outwards as problems stubbornly refused to roll over and solve themselves. Basically, this investment is a signal from Intel that it intends to push its technological advantage over TSMC, GloFo, UMC, and Samsung, even further."
now this is the slashdot kind of post i remember!
Who else was thinking "yet another damn markup language"?
This is an ominous sign of things to come. Intel already has significant advantages in the foundry business. These could be leveraged further to give its x86 chips a boost vis-a-vis ARM. The other players need to pull their act together & pool resources to counter this. If there is no level-playing field because the foundries can't keep up we could well be facing an x86 monopoly in the low-power chip market too.
Is that a new competition at the Olympics this year?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What ever happened to the good old american pussy? Ass this, ass that, ass, ass, ass. Is it cool to have prison sex? I don't think so but what do I know. Where's Hans Reiser on this?
Do you folks even realize IBM, TSMC, Global Foundries and Samsung announced their 450nm production back in March?
http://blog.timesunion.com/business/tool-makers-waiting-for-clarity-on-450mm-cost-sharing/53301/
All the players are in the game:
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-imec-nanophotonics-components-300mm-silicon.html
Usually, the first few years of a fab are its most expensive, when it has to both operate @ capacity and be profitable. Essentially, using the ASML and other technologies, Intel would either build new fabs or upgrade some of their existing ones to 45cm technology. Here, they'd get twice as much die as they got on an equivalent 30cm wafer on the same lithography node (e.g. 22nm), but if one factors in that there might be a die shrink involved as well, make that even more. Translated into units, Intel would simply have to sell a whole lot more.
There are a variety of ways that they can do it - building everything from Atoms to Xeons and their complete chipsets, fabbing chips for other chipmakers, and last but not least, when the fabs have depreciated considerably, fab out NAND flash memory that can be used in making their SSDs. The last should really have fabs operating @ full volume. Once they are there, that fab is a pure asset, except that it has to be kept running full time regardless of demand, which is one of the pitfalls that makes many companies consider going fabless.
Intel is an economy of scale, they are not a monopoly until government steps in to prevent other companies from investing into microprocessor design and manufacturing.
Of-course I always argue that patents and copyrights DO provide a government created barrier to entry into any market, especially high tech stuff.
Now, if Intel is not providing you with a product you want and you think they are overcharging and you believe there is a FINANCIAL sense in having another designer and manufacturer company in the market and it would be profitable by being able to sell because of whatever efficiencies and better product, better business, then clearly you have an opportunity that you should approach investors with.
There are plenty of millionaires and billionaires that want to invest into a sound business idea and if they are not investing it's because they don't think the idea is sound (that's why the California plan for high speed rail is not done privately - nobody is stupid enough to believe they can make a profit there, only government doesn't care about losing all sorts of tax payer money on nonsense projects that market isn't willing to take on).
So you think you have a good idea? What is stopping you (except the shitty economy of-course, but again, that's gov't for you with all the inflation, laws, taxes). If you can make a better processor and it will be cheaper, don't you think you'd be able to SELL it?
You think you can make a processor better than Intel and sell it cheaper than Intel? You can be a billionaire yourself. Do it, I want a cheaper better processor, go ahead.
You can't handle the truth.
Since the wafers are growing larger, unlike the process sizes, which are shrinking, they should use larger units. Previously, they'd use 0.45 microns, but when it shrank considerably more, they started using nanometers to represent the process size. Conversely, previously, they'd call the wafer sizes 200mm or 300mm, but now, since there is the potential of confusion between 0.45 micron process size and 0.45 meter diameter of a wafer, since the former will be 450nm and the latter will be 450mm, they should change the units of the wafer diameter as well. Either call it 45cm or 4.5dm (deci-meters) - I'm assuming that we're not likely to ever see wafer sizes reach 1 meter, since it would complicate the transportation of those things.
Really? Because I love it when the person with all the money puts up a huge bet at the poker table. I can't win unless they do. If they play it ultra conservative, I have no chance.
As another poster mentioned, Intel is not the only one who wants 450 mm wafers. A big part of the cost of wafer processing is proportional to the number of wafers and not on the surface area; that's why a transition to 450 mm will lead to cost reduction. This cost aspect actually doesn't apply for ASML's lithography tools (or so I believe), since the tool throughput (wafers per hour) is roughly inversely proportional to the wafer surface area. The throughput depends largely on how fast you can move wafers around with nanometer-level accuracy (does not get easier with a bigger wafer) and how much light power is available (which doesn't depend on the wafer size).
Disclosure: I work in ASML's R&D department (not on the 450 mm stuff), but the above views are my own.
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