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The
new system, called Vistara, is a central hub inside chip
factories that feeds silicon discs called wafers into sealed
vacuum chambers, where metals and other materials can be either
deposited or stripped away within a few atoms of precision.
Applied Materials announced the new system at a chipmaking
conference in San Francisco. The United States is poised to
deploy tens of billions of dollars in subsidies on chip
factories and European Union lawmakers were set to enact similar
legislation.
The Vistara system is the first update to Applied's core
chipmaking platform since 2010. Making advanced chips has become
more complicated since then, so the new system is designed to
let factories mix and match more types of vacuum chambers to
avoid bottlenecks in any one part of the process, speeding up
production.
The new system is also fitted with thousands of sensors that
feed data into an artificial intelligence system, where
factories can analyze the data to tweak manufacturing processes
and cut down the use of electricity. The new system cuts energy
use by about 10%, Applied said.
Mike Rice, vice president of the semiconductor products group at
Applied, said the Vistara system has already shipped to more
than one memory chip maker and that makers of the computing
chips that form the brains of most electronic devices have also
shown "interest." Applied declined to name the customers.
"You're trying to get more productivity, a smaller footprint,
the intelligence and energy savings for those applications,"
Rice said of memory chips. "It's going to continue to grow ...
but for right now, it's started out with mostly the leading
memory" factories, he said.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by
Matthew Lewis)
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