What's Next In AI, Chips And Masks

Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about AI and Moore's Law, lithography, and photomask technologies. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: In the eBeam Initiative's recent Luminary Survey, the participants had some interesting observations about the outlook for the photomask market. Fujimura: In the last couple of years, mask revenues have been going up. Prior to that, mask revenues were fairly steady at around $3 billion per year. Recently, they have gone up beyond the $4 billion level, and they're projected to keep going up. Luminaries believe a component of this increase is because of the shift in the industry toward EUV. One question in the survey asked participants, 'What business impact will COVID have on the photomask market?' Some people think it may be negative, but the majority of the people believe that it's not going to have much of an effect -- or it might have a positive effect.