Cost-effective fab-capacity expansion

摘要

With the semiconductor industry upturns and downturns occurring more frequently, capacity planning becomes a difficult task, Greenfield expansions can take 18 months or more to put capacity in place, and fab expansions can take up to 12 months. As an alternative, fab upgrades can put capacity on line in as little as three months with an attractive return on in-vestment (ROI). ROI analyses show that investing in a Standard Mechanical Interface (SMIF)-based upgrade to an existing 200-mm fabrication facility is competitive with adding tools, upgrading deanroom space and other methods used to increase the number of wafers per month run through an existing fab. Keep in mind that in the SMIF-based option, "upgrade" should not be read as "helping older process technology keep up." Increasingly, ROI analyses for SMIF show that these upgrades make the most sense for large die and challenging technology nodes. In fact, our market research shows that some of the largest opportunities in the industry for SMIF upgrades are for 130-nm node technology and above (see Figure 1, page 23).