Productivity enhancement

Summary form only given. The semiconductor industry is quickly approaching an era where productivity enhancements must be larger and be developed faster than at the historical pace. Historical trends that have allowed the industry to meet productivity improvement in capital assets are discussed. It is noted that the capital expenditure necessary to build a wafer fabrication facility for a given amount of capacity can be expressed in terms of capital costs per wafer start. This indicator had been increasing at the rate of about 50% per generation if one normalizes to the equivalent DRAM generation of process technology. There are multiple reasons for this increase, principally growing wafer size and complexity. Over the last one to two generations, this indicator has increased at nearly 100% per generation. Counterbalancing that escalation has been a concurrent increase in yield. At the 1-Mbit generation of technology, leading edge factories have yields well above 50% (product of line yield and die yield). It is no longer possible to double the yields to maintain the historical productivity of capital. Options that exist to meet this challenge are mentioned, including better work-in-progress control and improved process controls