The Promised Land Is Still 300 mm Away

摘要

After an early flurry of activity, multinational companies have begun to exercise caution when installing additional manufacturing capacity using 300 mm wafers. The combination of lagging global semiconductor demand, excess wafer manufacturing capacity and reductions in feature size have prompted companies to question the need to spend $3B to expand production. Analysts and industry observers in recent years have significantly changed their forecasts for conversion to 300 mm wafer manufacturing. Global semiconductor forecasts issued in 2000 predicted that the capacity available to deliver leading-edge CMOS logic designs, microprocessors and memory would experience significant constraints. These forecasts spurred 300 mm factory installations by both IDMs and by pure-play foundry service providers.