Items tagged with 450mm
Last month, Intel announced a deal in which it would invest $4.1B in the photolithography company ASML in exchange for a 15% ownership stake in the company. Now, TSMC has followed suit with its own announcement. The Taiwanese foundry hinted in its last conference call that it might take this step, so it's not a surprise to see it following through. Under the terms of the deal, TSMC is investing €276 into developing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and 450mm wafer deployments, with a further €838 investment that buys it a 5% equity stake in the company. ASML is a vital company to both Intel and TSMC; it manufacturers the hardware that the two competitors use to build their respective...
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Intel, Samsung, and TSMC--big players in the fabrication of semiconductors--have announced that they will be collaborating in order to target an industry-wide transition to 450mm wafers starting in the year 2012. Most semiconductors today are manufactured on 300mm wafers--a transition that started in 2001--which was 10 years after the transition to 200mm wafers. Targeting 2012 as the next transition period keeps "in line with the historical pace of growth." The reasons for this planned transition were spelled out in a joint press release from the three companies:"Historically, manufacturing with larger wafers helps increase the ability to produce semiconductors at a lower cost. The total silicon...
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