Economic uncertainty changes spending attitudes
The semiconductor industry seems to have responded to this latest economic uncertainly with extreme caution. The general view of the manufacturers, at least in the U.S., is to hunker down and spend as little money as possible. The huge downturn in the semiconductor industry that began in the very late 1990s is fresh enough in the industry’s memory that any economic or market uncertainty is met with skepticism and caution. The freewheeling days of the early and mid 90s are probably gone forever.
Within the more cautious economic attitude of the semiconductor industry is a silver lining for those OEMs and service companies that have made a commitment to servicing older capital equipment. Much capital equipment is mechanically solid and requires only diligent maintenance, and perhaps some peripheral upgrades to extend the life of the equipment. Fabs can delay replacement of equipment which not only saves the capital cost of the tool, but also the cost of facilitization and process development.
Mechanical upgrades could revolve around improvements in materials. For example, bearings could be replaced with more reliable versions, or tubing or seals could be replaced with versions that are less reactive with chemistry. In some cases, process is affected by the consistency of facilities and is not controlled within the tool. If the OEM isn’t available for controls upgrades, better control can be applied to facilities either with upgraded sub-fab control systems, or with per-tool or per-cluster control systems such as Atomic Medium’s RIOC™ system combined with added or better flow controllers and meters. Add-on systems such as the RIOC™ can report their results through SECS/GEM interfaces and more sophisticated MES systems can multiplex the data to track per-tool data, or to even shut down the tool if serious errors occur.