2012-10-18
ASML upriver tied pile, sharing 18-inch risk

Semiconductor lithography equipment maker ASML After obtaining three major semiconductor customers to invest NT $ 200 billion, announced and then further upstream tied pile to 1.95 billion euros (equivalent to about NT $ 75 billion yuan) acquisition of US source supplier Cymer. ASML said the 8-inch 12-inch wafer transfer generation equipment manufacturers suffer too much pressure to make future generations must be 18 inches chain together to share the risk, EUV technology has been proved to work, but the bottleneck in the light source, ASML currently has three light source supplier, respectively U.S. Cymer, Japan Gigaphoto and Ushio, various different mining techniques, after a period of time to cooperate, ASML decided merger Cymer, and affirms its LPP (Laser produced Plasma) light source technology is expected to become the mainstream of future production, ASML noted that the current six Pre -Production of EUV machine (NXE: 3100) has shipped to TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Hynix, GlobalFoundries, IMEC, etc., and will launch mass production machine (NXE: 3300B) in 2014. at present, this machine per hour producing 18 wafers, 69 wafers can be achieved by 2014, ASML as a 18-inch wafer generation key role in obtaining the customer’s investment after three acquisitions light plant Cymer, this series of investment to the semiconductor industry chain to string together, show parties want some sort of relief for the 18-inch wafer generations.