U.S. Milestone in Chip-Making Is Reached : Technology: A powerful new computer chip is developed by Sematech, a consortium funded in part by the Defense Department.
Sematech, the government-backed computer chip consortium, said Thursday that it had reached an important technical milestone in its effort to restore U.S. competitiveness in chip manufacturing.
The announcement is the latest indication that improved management at U.S. firms, a major recession in the Japanese market and government policies have enabled the American chip industry to begin turning the tide in its long battle with the Japanese.
Sematech’s achievement was to produce chips with electrical devices just 0.35 microns wide using American production equipment.
The smaller the devices, the more of them can be crammed onto a single chip--and more devices mean more powerful chips.
Next-generation memory chips using 0.35 micron technology will hold 2 million words of information.
The state-of-the-art in chip production is now 0.6 microns. But Japanese vendors recently began demonstrating their ability to produce 0.35 micron chips, and the newer technology is expected to be in use on production lines by mid-decade.
Achieving 0.35 micron capabilities by the end of 1992 was one of Sematech’s goals at its founding in 1987.
But Thursday’s announcement isn’t likely to end the long-running debate over whether Sematech--which receives $100 million a year of Department of Defense funds and an additional $100 million a year from 11 member companies--is a worthwhile endeavor. And U.S. companies still face big challenges in taking advantage of the recent progress.
“The U.S. is coming back on track technically,” said Dan Hutcheson, president of the market research firm VLSI Research. “But you still have tremendously weak companies” in the chip equipment business.
Most of Sematech’s funds go toward subsidizing the research and development of dozens of relatively small companies that produce chip-making equipment.
That doesn’t sit well with some of the chip manufacturers that make up Sematech’s membership: Three of them have quit the consortium, including Harris Corp., which dropped out earlier this month.
And in key areas, the U.S. position remains precarious. The market for the most important type of chip-making gear, known as a “stepper,” is dominated by Japan’s Nikon and Canon.
A U.S. company, GCA Corp., supplied the stepper used by Sematech in its 0.35 micron demonstration.
But GCA’s parent, General Signal Corp., announced last week that it was putting GCA and its other chip equipment businesses up for sale because they were unprofitable.
