View PDFSAN JOSE, Calif. - December 3, 2008 - Novellus Systems announced that its industry-leading VECTOR Express™ tool had received the "2008 Excellent Performance in CVD Equipment Award" from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) at their 2008 Supply Chain Management Forum. The award highlights Novellus' success in supporting TSMC's need for high productivity in manufacturing while enabling innovative next generation plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) solutions in R&D. Novellus was one of six suppliers recognized by TSMC.
"We are honored to receive this award from TSMC in recognition of VECTOR Express' contribution to their leading-edge foundry operations," said Tom Caulfield, executive vice president, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service at Novellus Systems. "First released at the 130nm node, the VECTOR platform continues to be the benchmark for technology and productivity for the 45nm device generation. This success was driven by engineering the platform to meet not only technical challenges in film quality, uniformity and defectivity, but also by continually driving low cost of ownership through productivity - thus helping customers keep pace with Moore's Law."
Since its introduction to the market in March 2007, VECTOR Express has met with rapid industry adoption. The platform offers flexibility to produce various BEOL and FEOL dielectric films on the same tool. Additionally, the VECTOR Express enables fabs to increase production capacity in a more cost efficient manner than similar tools on the market.
About VECTOR Express:
The VECTOR Express PECVD platform is used to deposit a variety of films for memory and logic devices. VECTOR Express delivers industry-leading productivity and fundamental thin film process improvement with its SmartSoak™ processing feature. SmartSoak takes advantage of the VECTOR platform's multi-station sequential processing (MSSP) architecture to control wafer heat-up independently from film deposition. This enables a more stable and consistent wafer temperature at the start of film deposition while simultaneously reducing thin film processing time.
About Novellus:
Novellus Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVLS) is a leading provider of advanced process equipment for the global semiconductor industry. The company's products deliver value to customers by providing innovative technology backed by trusted productivity. An S&P 500 company, Novellus is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. with subsidiary offices across the globe. For more information, please visit www.novellus.com
About TSMC:
TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology and the foundry's largest portfolio of process-proven libraries, IP, design tools and reference flows. The Company's total managed capacity in 2008 is to exceed nine million (8-inch equivalent) wafers, including capacity from two advanced 12-inch Gigafabs, four eight-inch fabs, one six-inch fab, as well as TSMC's wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech and TSMC (Shanghai), and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 40nm production capabilities. Its corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please see http://www.tsmc.com