LONDON -- LSI Logic Corp. aims to move to production based on 300-millimeter (12-inch) wafers for its next, 0.13-micron process. Wilf Corrigan, chairman and chief executive officer, said the company plans to have production running at its Santa Clara, Calif., wafer fab on 12-inch wafers by the end of 2002.
LSI Logic, based in Milpitas, Calif., is one of many companies looking for the right time to make the expensive jump to 300-mm manufacturing. Correctly executed, the move could reduce production costs per die for chip makers.
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Corrigan cites lack of equipment as obstacle.
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In an interview last week, Corrigan said 12-inch manufacturing was not without obstacles, not least the lack of equipment. LSI Logic is pressing ahead with a pilot line based on 8-inch wafers at the Santa Clara fab for a process being jointly developed with Hitachi Ltd.
"There is a question of when real equipment will be available," he said. "There are a number of 12-inch fabs alleged to be in existence. They range from a patch of ground to a prototype line. We still have to see real production out of a 12-inch fab."
But Corrigan predicted that "12-inch will rapidly start to become widely adopted. A few years out, the new equipment will only be available for 12-inch lines," he said. "We are targeting 12-inch at the 0.13-micron level, although that equipment will also run 0.18 micron. But we are bringing up 0.13 micron on 8-inch wafers on our pilot line. We have a two-step situation, where we could decide whether to put the process on 8- or 12-inch."
However, Corrigan said, "We would expect to be running 12-inch wafers by late 2002."
The 0.13-micron process would use optical proximity correction and phase-shift masks to overcome the problems of manufacturing at such small geometries, Corrigan said.
--Chris Edwards is the editor of Electronics Times, a sister newspaper of SBN in the United Kingdom.
