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Minifabs Would Suit U.K.
By Harry Yeates -- Electronics Weekly, 12/16/2004
The U.K.'s chip industry would be well-served by investing, perhaps in collaboration with Europe, in developing a version of Japan's HALCA (highly agile line concept advancement) minifab chip production technology, according to the country's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
A report for the DTI's GlobalWatch service suggests that an indigenous flexible fabrication capability, built at lower cost and with far lower operating expense than a traditional fab, would meet the production requirements of typical U.K. chip companies.
"We have an extremely strong design base, and a lot of that design base is working on products that fit the low-volume, short lifetime model [for which minifabs are ideal]," explained Ian Burnett, a director at semiconductor equipment and materials association JEMI U.K.
For these companies, local prototyping and low-volume production would save them from having to compete for space in foundries in Asia/Pacific with higher volume chips, and improve feedback. According to the HALCA definitions, a minifab is designed to handle around 2,500 wafer starts per month, compared to 25,000 for a high capacity facility.
Although the HALCA program looked at minifabs from the point of view of low-volume manufacture, the DTI mission was also interested in adopting the concept to provide production capability for complex nanotechnology-based devices, which might include organic or magnetic materials difficult to integrate in to a traditional line.
Any project would require the development of new tools, making a collaborative effort most likely. Either a network of different process technologies could be developed in different locations, or a complete HALCA line could be built. That might pique interest from device manufacturers.
"The feeling was that we should try get either U.K. or European money to put one together," said Burnett.
Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News.
