Driving Semiconductor Innovation and Yield at Scale with Jim Straus, ACM Research

Russ Fordyce 🏆 (00:01.38) Welcome back to the winner's circle, everybody. I am here with Jim from ACM Research. Excuse me, they are another big Innovation Award winner. And this time, it's really personal to me with semiconductor manufacturing. I was in the business, and Jim's going to tell us all about it and the hopeful boom that's coming back to America. So Jim, welcome to the winner's circle, and congratulations on the award. Jim Straus (00:24.226) Thanks for us, appreciate it. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (00:25.988) So for those of us that aren't knowledgeable about ACM research, tell us a little bit about what you guys do and kind of where you fit in that semiconductor ecosystem. Jim Straus (00:36.888) We'll do. Russ, we're a US-based company started by our founder and current CEO, David Wong, in 1998 in Fremont, California. So we began building semiconductor manufacturing equipment. We had some initial success here in the US, but then David saw an opportunity to move to Asia and he invested money in Asia, both in Shanghai and in Korea. And we have manufacturing and R &D operations over there now. We are rapidly growing. We've basically grown at a 50 % year-over-year clip for the past six, seven years. So again, very actively. working to grow our business. That's both in Asia and in the rest of world. So again, my name is Jim Strauss. I'm the head of sales and service for North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The bulk of our revenue right now is still being created in China and Korea. opportunity for us to grow because of our technology and because of our leadership in the technology area, specifically in wet clean and electroplating, is really providing space for us in North America and Europe to grow as well as, again, Southeast Asia. So we're looking forward to a lot of growth. We're actually investing here in, I live in the Portland area in Oregon. We're investing here to build a manufacturing facility and an R &D facility that it will have demo capability so our customers have ready access to our technology here in North America. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (03:00.738) And you guys are not building the chips, you're building the systems and the tools and the dyes and the processes to make those chips. And I think you've done a lot of work at improving those processes to such an extent that you can yield more chips and more wafers and more production out of the normal facility, if I've read all the information right. Jim Straus (03:05.238) Yeah, yeah, we- Jim Straus (03:22.318) That you're exactly right. you know, again, our systems that we sell are millions of dollars. They're very complex. They take mechanical, electrical, software process and integrate all of those things and deliver a result on the wafer. Right. And the results on the wafer for us, you know, the main product has been single wafer wet clean. And a single way for wet clean is a process that can basically be used between all of the steps in making a semiconductor. So if there's 500 steps, separate steps, there might be 500 wet clean steps in there as well. So it's a huge opportunity for our company to provide cutting edge technology in that space. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (04:24.132) Yeah, and it's such a great time. You know, we have the promise of the US economy supporting jobs back in the United States for semiconductor manufacturing, and that seems to be starting, and we're hopeful for that. But just in a bigger sense, the AI boom is really driving demand for these chips. And we all look at NVIDIAs of the world and the Taiwan semiconductors of the world, but there are lots of chip makers, not a lot in the United States, but there's a lot of chip makers out there who are doing very specialized chips. there's chips in your toothbrush, right, all the way through to your cars and computers and servers. And so, I mean, I would, I couldn't even imagine how many chips are in a modern car. There's got to be 30 or 40 probably or more, you know, every... Jim Straus (04:59.522) Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Jim Straus (05:12.344) I think hundreds would be a better description, yes. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (05:14.884) Yeah, I mean, every sensor, every door panel, everything's got a chip in it. And then you get into kind of specialty chips that just drive the air conditioning or something. So there's just this huge boom now too with AI of shortages of the big chips. Jim Straus (05:25.389) Yeah. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (05:35.416) and it's having a massive effect globally on everything, right? Chip supply, memory supply. How is that affecting your customers and how are you dealing with that? Jim Straus (05:43.278) So one of the big opportunities that we're pursuing and actually having a tremendous amount of success in is in the wafer level packaging area. So. Packaging used to be a low technology type activity, but nowadays it's really an enabler of technology. Kind of, you know, we're pushing the edge of Moore's laws and just creating more more transistors. Now we're integrating chips in the packaging area and giving really capability that we never had before. Again, that's done. right now on 300 millimeter wafers, but in the future we will move to panel level packaging, which will be done both on 300 by 300 square substrates and then even larger 500 millimeter or 600 millimeters square substrates. And that will give a tremendous economic advantage to the manufacturers who choose that path. And a lot of our innovation has been in that space. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (07:09.904) Well, yeah, talk us through that panel level change. What does that mean for a typical customer of yours looking at your equipment? What are they evolving to? Jim Straus (07:21.784) So when they move to panel level packaging, it creates a significant amount of real estate that you can use on that panel to create chips. And the fact that it's not round, that it's square, gives it a significant advantage. You're using all of that space to create the packages, essentially. And the packages consist of all different types of memory, logic, types of chips integrated into one package. So what does that mean for our customers? It means, again, if you go to this panel level with this digital real estate, you're going to save 30 to 50 % in cost because you're utilizing all of that space, much less waste. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (08:20.984) Now, chip manufacturers don't necessarily care about costs, but the ones I've talked to, and especially the ones that I've dealt with in a few of our awards programs, actually appreciate the cost benefit of that. There's a speed element to it too, that you're not dealing with waste, but it's also the sustainability aspect of it, is you're using 50 % less product going into the ground of whatever you're using. Jim Straus (08:46.99) You know, everything that we work on, everything that we do really has sustainability in mind. That's part of our corporate philosophy. And I think we do a very good job of reducing the amount of chemicals that are used, trying to reduce the amount of waste, trying to reuse as much as possible. Just overall, working on sustainability as part of what we can deliver for our customers. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (09:23.608) Yeah, and I know the downstream customers appreciate it too. I know a lot of the people using those chips, some of those big giant companies we were talking about before. They're the guys that actually have mandates to drive down waste, drive down all of that. And so a lot of that is being pushed by the customer too, which is fantastic. I'm thrilled that a lot of these boards are doing that. What is your ideal customer? What are your customers kind of look like? You're in that a little bit different space than the Nvidia space. Jim Straus (09:40.992) Absolutely. Yeah. Jim Straus (10:00.076) Yeah, our customers, we focus a lot on the larger chipmakers. But there's also smaller chipmakers who are doing some cutting edge things that really need our support. We like to work with larger customers because the volume obviously is something for us to take advantage of. But some of the smaller customers, have some very specific needs that we can customize our products to meet that probably some of our competitors might not want to do. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (10:43.216) Right. And you guys have had a lot of advancements in that area. I think you've got some new patents around, you know, kind of this panel level technology. Walk us through some of that new technology that's going into that new for those chip makers. Jim Straus (11:00.524) Yeah, so we've introduced one of the big introductions has been four panel level packaging is an ECP tool. Now, in the past, electroplating for panels has all been done vertically. We actually introduced a tool that provides the horizontal surface to do the electroplating on. and it's really the first of a kind in the industry. And what that does is it gives the opportunity to improve uniformity by significant amounts, say from maybe 15 % to 5 % non-uniformity, which is a significant improvement and really helps with the potential for higher yields on the panels. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (11:54.97) Well, that's what I, all of this, all of your work seems to be driving at that yield of getting every square millimeter out of that panel. When your customers first kind of use your technology to build out, are you getting that feedback from them on measurability? Are they coming back and telling you, know, Jim, you did it. Jim Straus (12:17.134) So specifically with our single wafer wet clean, we integrate the chemistry and the energy and the mechanical capability to be able to really, really improve the customer's yield. And yes, really, that's how we made our footprint. was providing yield improvements. And they could actually measure the yield improvement at the end of the line using our tool versus using our competitors' tools. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (12:57.902) Well, in this day and age, especially, I've talked with some other folks in this space, with the AI models going the way they are, I imagine these chips, the development cycle on these chips is radically accelerating, A, because of your maybe ability to use AI to accelerate that, but also just in terms of the AI companies needing slightly tweaked chips every seemingly moment. Jim Straus (13:25.174) Yeah, so you're right. The product development cycle is very, very fast. And the needs for developing the number of steps has gone to a point where it's just a really complex process. But they are able to use a lot of advanced tools to help them develop their products. again, that just means things have to happen much more quickly. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (14:04.26) Yeah, and speed to market for these guys now is everything. You're watching these hundreds of billions of dollars now flow through these companies because of the latest LLM or chip or whatever. Now you talked a little bit about expansion. You guys have, I think, doubled your footprint in America and your workforce is growing. Jim Straus (14:09.003) It is. Jim Straus (14:19.939) Yeah. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (14:28.132) How would you envision expanding the business going forward with kind of this AI boom and this hopeful economics on the US home front of being able to invest a little bit more in the US workforce? Jim Straus (14:42.828) Yeah, so again, we are investing here in the Portland area. We've already purchased the building. We're installing it or revamping the clean room that already existed in the building, creating manufacturing space. We are an American company, again, with a significant presence in Asia, but we want to bring a lot of that manufacturing and R &D capability to our home turf, I guess is what I'll say. And we think the real opportunity here is for us to be close to the customer and provide the service and technical capability that... that we have developed outside of the US. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (15:36.708) Yeah, it's amazing to me how kind of real-time semiconductors are. mean, the... We talked about the development life cycles. Those development life cycles on the product side of the house are actually typically two to three years long because you're betting on technology being there in two or three years. It's very interesting when you can do that. You're kind of praying and hoping that Jim delivers on his new, you know, panel level wafer. But you really are betting and you're betting on all those bets. And I love it because thank God we have engineers who are managing all this because Jim Straus (16:00.268) Mm-hmm. Jim Straus (16:05.518) Exactly. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (16:16.752) it does pay off more often than not. don't get the delays of, you the massive delays of the next chip or the next this or that because people are delivering on that innovation like you guys are where it's that little piece of the process that makes the next step possible, you know. And so it's really interesting time to be in that business, I would imagine. Jim Straus (16:35.948) Yeah, I think you really have to work closely with your customers and align roadmaps with what the customer's needs are going to be and what you're going to create to meet those needs. again, it's all about teamwork and working with customers to develop products that they're going to need down the road. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (17:00.356) Yeah, is co-creation for sure, especially in this business. You have to have those capabilities, right? There's nobody doing it all anymore. As you look ahead in the next 12 months, what challenges do you think the fabs will have other than maybe growing an energy? There's gotta be some technology changes that have to happen. Jim Straus (17:11.374) Exactly. Jim Straus (17:21.251) Okay. Jim Straus (17:24.886) Yeah, so I do believe that this transition to panel level packaging is going to be a significant challenge. I worked for Applied Materials for a long time before I came to work for ACM Research. And we went through this whole, OK, we're going to transition from 300 millimeter wafers to 450 millimeter wafers. And it never actually happened. because there were so many challenges. And I think not just technology challenges, but could you make the economics work? I'm much more hopeful that the panel level packaging is going to be both a boon for technology as well as the economic approach that it brings. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (18:22.14) It certainly sounds like it's just the reduction in materials alone seems like it's a semiconductor's, know, manufacturer's dream of being able to shorten cycles like that and shorten the waste and everything else. If you had to talk to, you know, if you could blast your message to every semiconductor exec listening out there right now, what's one tool or way they need to rethink their process, you know, beyond the panel stuff that could really, you know, give them an advantage? Jim Straus (18:51.374) Again, so I think our technology uses energy to support the cleaning of the wafers and our technology development has given us a capability to do that in a way where we can use that energy without destroying the structure of the wafer. it's interesting, I think, for especially the advanced semiconductor manufacturers to be able to look at some of this technology and understand that you have to be able to clean those really minute spaces and you have to be able to do it without collapsing the structure. I think that's the main advantage that our equipment has. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (19:57.53) Super interesting. I can't wait to see you guys have quadruple sales. I know you will appreciate that. But I really can't wait to see the investment really start pouring into the US economy and watching those semiconductors come. No offense to Asia and other parts of America, or other parts of the world, but I definitely would love to see some of that come back here. I do think it's of strategic importance to us. So I really appreciate the conversations, Jim. It's been really interesting learning about this and learning more about it. Jim Straus (20:26.488) Thanks, Russ. your time. Appreciate your conversation. Russ Fordyce 🏆 (20:27.62) Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and congratulations on the win. Jim Straus (20:33.528) Thank you.