February 23, 2012 — SEMI’s International Strategy Symposium (ISS) meets for its Europe session February 26-28 in Munich, Germany. Following are some of the 450mm wafer presentations scheduled to take place. Solid State Technology chief editor Peter Singer will attend the event and share his observations on electroiq.com.
During a working lunch on the 28th, at Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski, Jonathan Davis, president, Semiconductor Business Unit, SEMI , will gather presenters from ASM International, Intel, ENIAC, and imec to discuss 450mm:
Jonathan Davis
Every decade or so, leading semiconductor makers adopt a larger wafer standard to improve the productivity of chip making. These periods represent significant industry inflections and typically mark periods of consolidation and capital spending concentration. After several years of debate and analysis, the semiconductor industry is now poised to proceed with more substantive 450mm R&D. The expert panel moderated by SEMI will explore the implications of this looming industry transition for the European semiconductor supply chain and discuss strategies for enduring European competiveness.
Andreas Wild, Executive Director, ENIAC Joint Undertaking
The ENIAC Joint Undertaking is the public-private partnership chartered to contribute to the competitiveness and sustainability of the European nanoelectronics. Bringing together the national public authorities, the European Commission and the R&D actors, the ENIAC JU engaged in establishing a framework that shall enable the European semiconductor equipment and materials manufacturers to continue on their growth path and successfully compete at the cutting edge of 450mm innovation in semiconductors.
Bas van Nooten, Director European Cooperative Programs, ASM International
The European semiconductor equipment & materials industry is an important high tech industry in Europe and employs around 100.000 people. The major market for this industry lays outside Europe (Europe’s part in semiconductor equipment invest has declined to 6% in this millennium) and is dominated by the tier 1 semiconductor companies. The top 3 cover nearly 50% of the total worldwide invest. Therefore, if the world’s dominating semiconductor suppliers, now combined in the G450C consortium, are moving towards 450mm, it is key for the European Equipment and Materials (E&M) industry to be on top of this wafer transition. The E&M industry has recognised this fact early on and have already established a 450mm initiative, called EEMI450, in 2009. Currently more than 45 companies and institutes have joined this initiative and since 2009 many European 450mm projects have started, the first one already finishing shortly. By this early engagement the European E&M industry strives to be competitive in this new market segment and gain market share.
The EEMI450 White Paper presented to the European Commission in Feb 2012 will be launched and shared with the press.
Paolo Gargini, Intel
The coming transition to 450mm will reduce costs and thereby enable the continuation of Moore’s Law, meaning ever more functionality for unit cost to the end user, and thus continue to expand the existing markets and create brand new ones. This wafer size transition will benefit the entire industry, from tools and materials suppliers to manufacturers, and ultimately, consumers. Several predictions and analysis reports indicate that silicon area demand will remain strong for the foreseeable future, making it imperative that the industry move to a larger wafer size as soon as possible. The transition to 450mm got a big kick start with the recent formation of the G450C, bringing together the leading five chip manufacturers. It is anticipated that G450C will act as a catalyst for the global supplier community around the world by linking with organizations like SEMI, EEMI450 etc. The move to 450mm will require industry-wide collaboration between device makers, consortia and suppliers. 450mm will also be beneficial for the environment, following upon the move last decade to 300mm, which reduced aggregate emissions per die by 43%.
Luc Van den hove, CEO, IMEC
In Europe, we need innovation leadership to keep Europe a global competitive player.
To maintain leadership in healthcare, in automotive, in energy, in communication systems we need leadership on innovation enabled by state-of-the-art technology platforms in more Moore and More than Moore.
We have many strengths in Europe: world-leading R&D institutes, world-leading equipment and material suppliers, and many high-end system companies. We need to strengthen our strengths and change Europe into an innovation engine. European companies have to differentiate themselves by innovative advanced technology.
We are convinced that open innovation is essential to enable an efficient innovation process. It allows very efficient cost sharing, risk mitigation, provides early insights, acceleration, etc. What is really needed for Europe for making the open innovation model work is: build critical mass, work globally with the leaders.
For effective open innovation we need full industry value chain integration (a multidisciplinary approach, innovation nowadays occurs at the boundaries of disciplines…). We can do such research only based on world-class state-of-the-art infrastructure. In order to maintain such innovation leadership position on the longer term, it will be imperative to set up a 450mm R&D and demonstration facility. This will be needed in order to support the entire European eco system (including equipment and material suppliers, …). Such 450mm R&D and demo facility will act as the primary innovation engine 5 to 10 years from now.
In a related presentation, Willy Van Puymbroek, European Commission, will share a short overview of ongoing projects related to 450mm that are financed by the European Union through the seventh Framework Programme. The results from a study entitled ‘Benefits and Measures to Set Up 450mm Semiconductor Prototyping and to Keep Semiconductor Manufacturing in Europe: The role of Public Authorities and Programmes’ commissioned by the European Commission will be presented. The study puts forward three scenarios for Europe’s involvement in 450mm semiconductor manufacturing.
Notes from ISS, January 2012, Half Moon Bay, CA: