TSMC purchases US$4.5 billion worth of equipment in 2009

[onethreehill]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) spent more than NT$145 billion (US$4.57 billion) on machinery equipment in 2009, while rival United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) allocated around NT$22 billion to equipment, according to respective company filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE).

Last year, TSMC distributed around NT$28 billion to Applied Materials and NT$24 billion to ASML, and over NT$10 billion each to Tokyo Electron, Dainippon Screen Manufacturing and KLA-Tencor. These major tool suppliers accounted for almost 70% to the foundry's total equipment spending for 2009......
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100104PD210.html

[god_43]

....and they still had issue's with the 5xxx series.....fail!

[EniGmA1987]

Maybe they had issues because they were trying to do it on all new equipment on a new manufacturing process?

[NickF]

The new equipment obviously has nothing to do with current 40nm yields, it would make sense that they have just started utilizing them in the past month or two. When you buy a brand new car, do you bring it on the highway and floor it, or do you break it in first? Now imagine something signifacantly more complex and sensitive than even a car, and we have chips. I think that their equipment has just gotten broken in.

[Aberration]

If they already had the process running then it would take maybe 60 days to install some of the most complex stuff and then maybe another 30 to run through product qual, and I bet much faster for the product qual.

There is no breaking in of the equipment, its not a car. You install it, qual it, run it and monitor it. If it fails monitors you get the vendor to fix it.

And I have always been taught to break a car in like you intend to drive it, and all my cars have ran fantastic, just change the oils often.

[Nedjo]

the new equipment is preparation for 2011 war with GloFo on 28nm front!

[Katanai]

There is no breaking in of the equipment, its not a car. You install it, qual it, run it and monitor it.

Yeah it's more of a learning curve for the engineers and fine tuning of the equipment. Still it's practically the same thing, you need some time until you get it right. Let's hope that they worked out the major bugs and Nvidia won't have a fail line of GPU's again...

[NickF]

There is no breaking in of the equipment, its not a car. You install it, qual it, run it and monitor it. If it fails monitors you get the vendor to fix it.

Oh? Theres no callibration? Theres no test runs?

[YukonTrooper]

....and they still had issue's with the 5xxx series.....fail!
They're in the industry of high-tech innovation. Issues are to be expected.