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This is true. The wafer carrying "foups" mentioned are actually an acronym for Front Opening Unified Pods, which is what carry the wafers from machine to machin

This is true. The wafer carrying "foups" mentioned are actually an acronym for Front Opening Unified Pods, which is what carry the wafers from machine to machine in batches of up to 25 wafers at a time. They are typically UV opaque yellow, or black. The wafers aren't ever actually out in the open in the room at any time. (As an aside, since the air quality of the room was mentioned...god forbid you ever broke a wafer in the foup. Entire lot in that box is ruined, and cleaning the foup itself and the equipment front ends is a giant PITA) Source: was engineer at Varian Semiconductor / Applied Materials, who make all those giant tools that Intel and the other fabs use. Intel was definitely one of our largest customers and our most technically demanding.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Oh cool! I was exposed to some tools in a class 100 cleanroom at my research institute. None of them were from Varian though. The lab director always told me that the stuff used in academia is nothing compared to the tools used in large fabs like Intel and TSMC. By the way, how do tool manufacturers make money? Is it basically sales + maintenance + repairs? Do you have any idea what kind of profit margins they operate on?
- TFortunato 10y ago
  Very cool! Money came mainly from sales, but we also offered training courses and had a large services and maintenance division, since the tools did require periodic maintenance. A lot of these tools also have "consumables", just like other large pieces of equipment. Gas sources, graphite liners for beamline components, etc. As a whole the industry was very cyclical though. We would employ a ton of people in the factories in the years when everyone was moving to new process nodes, but in the years in between there could be lots of manufacturing layoffs / shifts to part time. On the engineering side work was more constant since we would be busy working on the next generation of tools. When I left we were working on the transition from 300mm wafers to 450mm (12 in. to 18 in.) As far as the profit margins went, I forgot our divisions exact numbers, but AMAT as a whole had roughly ~40% gross profit margins from what I remember. Being on the supplier side of the millions/billion dollar fab builds is a good business :-)
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    I see, never thought about the demand for tools that way. But that's a pretty damn lucrative business! I was just looking at the list of top semiconductor equipment manufacturers [1], and it seems that all of them are either American or Japanese companies! Thanks for taking the time to answer man :D [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_leaders_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_...

Cyph0n 10y ago

Oh cool! I was exposed to some tools in a class 100 cleanroom at my research institute. None of them were from Varian though. The lab director always told me that the stuff used in academia is nothing compared to the tools used in large fabs like Intel and TSMC. By the way, how do tool manufacturers make money? Is it basically sales + maintenance + repairs? Do you have any idea what kind of profit margins they operate on?

TFortunato 10y ago
Very cool! Money came mainly from sales, but we also offered training courses and had a large services and maintenance division, since the tools did require periodic maintenance. A lot of these tools also have "consumables", just like other large pieces of equipment. Gas sources, graphite liners for beamline components, etc. As a whole the industry was very cyclical though. We would employ a ton of people in the factories in the years when everyone was moving to new process nodes, but in the years in between there could be lots of manufacturing layoffs / shifts to part time. On the engineering side work was more constant since we would be busy working on the next generation of tools. When I left we were working on the transition from 300mm wafers to 450mm (12 in. to 18 in.) As far as the profit margins went, I forgot our divisions exact numbers, but AMAT as a whole had roughly ~40% gross profit margins from what I remember. Being on the supplier side of the millions/billion dollar fab builds is a good business :-)
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  I see, never thought about the demand for tools that way. But that's a pretty damn lucrative business! I was just looking at the list of top semiconductor equipment manufacturers [1], and it seems that all of them are either American or Japanese companies! Thanks for taking the time to answer man :D [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_leaders_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_equipment_sales_...