Market snapshot
09/01/1997
Market snapshot
A few consensus trends emerged from the avalanche of market reports and presentations at SEMICON/West. First, according to SEMI`s Elizabeth Schumann, 1997 is expected to see a continued slide in the DRAM market, as excess capacity continues to drive prices down.
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Other sectors, especially digital signal processors, will remain strong, however, so the overall semiconductor market will be up slightly in 1997, with a return to strong growth in 1998 and beyond.
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Capital equipment shipments will lag slightly behind the semiconductor market, with a slight decline in 1997, a slight increase in 1998, and a return to strong growth not expected until 1999.
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Dataquest analysts, speaking at the firm`s SEMICON/West seminar, sponsored by WaferNews, looked at individual market segments in more detail. Principal analyst Klaus-Dieter Rinnen showed that DRAMs and other memory devices constitute a disproportionate share of leading-edge (sub-0.5-micron) fabrication, where most tool purchases are made.
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Nearly half of all silicon processed below 0.5-micron is used for DRAMs, and about two-thirds goes into the memory sector (including SRAMs, flash, etc.). In more mature processes, analog, optoelectronic, and discrete devices consume the lion`s share of silicon, in part because shrinking these devices isn`t a priority.
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At the same seminar, Dataquest principal analyst Ron Dornseif pondered the implications of CMP for the etch markets, noting that dielectric CMP has already reduced dielectric etch`s share of the materials removal market. He expects copper damascene to dramatically reduce the metal etch market - few observers anticipate any copper etch steps - while CMP`s share of materials removal grows from insignificance in 1991 to nearly 30 percent of the total by 2001 or 2002.
In light of this last figure, Lam Research`s acquisition of OnTrak Systems and Applied Materials` in-house Mirra CMP program look very intelligent indeed. - K.D.