Weak sales shadow Semicon West

This year's Semicon West tradeshow follows an unusual schedule, with the packaging, assembly, and test portion, based in San Jose, running from July 17 to July 19. The wafer processing portion, based in San Francisco, runs from July 22 to July 24. Previous years have compressed both halves into a single week.

The last few days before the wafer processing show have brought the usual spate of last minute product announcements and industry news. The book-to-bill ratio (chart) for North American equipment suppliers crept up in June, to 1.28, on moderate growth in both bookings and shipments. Though fab utilization ratios are climbing, particularly for leading edge capacity, Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research believes weak chip prices and profitability issues will continue to undermine capital investment. With accounting scandals proliferating, investors are focusing on tangible assets like cash in preference to earnings or debt-financed capital investments.

As has been its pre-show custom in recent years, Applied Materials ended the week with a flurry of new product announcements. In addition to the Oasis cleaning system, announced in June, the company's dielectric and implantat groups bring new offerings to the show.

The Eterna sub-atmospheric CVD system deposits BPSG films for interlayer dielectrics, targeted at the sub-100nm generation. Applied Materials also offers a carbon-doped low-k dielectric, Black Diamond. Still, it is clear that adoption of low-k dielectrics is proceeding more slowly than anticipated, and that more conventional alternatives will continue to command significant sales.

The Quantum II ion implantation system targets high current implants, with significantly more beam current and energy accuracy than its predecessor. High beam currents increase throughput at the low implant energies needed for ultrashallow junctions.