The choice between buying new systems from OEMs or fully capable refurbished gear from qualified used equipment vendors is examined.
A significant portion of semiconductor production continues to take place in facilities equipped with 200mm or smaller equipment, which run processes for analog, mixed-signal, power ICs, and other mature device types. Recent data from Semico shown in FIGURES 1 and 2 reveal that 39% of the silicon consumed is devoted to 200mm, with another 9% going for wafers of <200mm, while technology nodes of 130nm and above account for approximately 50% of the silicon used.
Managers of these legacy fabs must balance tight process and time-to-market requirements with limited capital and operational budgets to stay competitive with low-cost producers. As the major original equipment manufacturers devote more of their budgets to 300mm tooling (or even 450mm) and invest less into their 200mm efforts, older semiconductor factories need high-quality sources of used systems and components as well as the tribal process knowledge that goes with them. The emergence and growth of the market for refurbished 300mm production tools has added even more complexity and challenges.