A shared approach to wafer fab support

For many years industry gurus have been urging closer links between suppliers and customers. At the Intel Fab 10 facility in Ireland, we believe this concept has been taken further than ever before in the semiconductor industry, via the Supplier Support Program. Intel's Fab 10 facility does not follow the traditional Fab support structure, in that it has substituted supplier personnel to carry out the equipment engineering functions. The performance of the overall system in expediting the turn on of Intel's billion dollar Pentium fab is discussed with respect to factory ramp time, the changing phases of the program and the consequences and expectations on line yield and die yield.