Flat Panel Display Makers Urged to Adopt Glass Standard

By Jack Robertson

EBN, December 15, 2000 - Flat panel display makers, which have failed utterly to standardize on motherglass glass sizes for four generations of products, were urged once again last week to try again to agree on a common size in the 1-meter square range.

Bruce Berkoff, executive vice president of marketing for LG.Philips LCD Co., told the Stanford Resources Inc. Flat Information Display Conference in Monterey, Calif., that the industry may have its last chance for a standard in the fifth generation 1-meter glass size. He reiterated all the well-known advantages: lower equipment costs, faster deliveries, and a more robust common infrastructure.

"Fifth generation plants will be so expensive, we have to do everything possible to cut soaring equipment costs," he said in an interview in his Seoul office earlier this month, as he prepared his talk. "We can't afford once again to let the self-interest of different companies following different market strategies to result again in a hodge-podge of different motherglass sizes."

Berkoff proposed setting up a "Standard Factory Working Group" to draft not a standard motherglass size but other common FPD processing standards. He cited the successful ad hoc industry Standard Panel Working Group (SPWG) that came up with common mechanical and electrical specifications for notebook displays.

Y. W. Lee, president of Samsung Semiconductor which includes the Korean firm's huge LCD operation, agreed in an interview that a standard motherglass size would be highly beneficial for new fifth generation fabs. Because of the industry's past failures to standardize, he wasn't sure there would be any more success in reaching a fifth generation size standard.

Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch Inc., Austin, Tex., was even more skeptical. "The SPWG was driven by the PC industry. But fifth generation LCDs are targeted mainly at the television (display) market. Once again I suspect the (LCD) manufacturers will pursue their own different strategies in selecting the most optimum motherglass size for panels they want to sell to the TV market, whether 20-inch, 28-inch, or 30-inch and above."

He said SPWG is toying with the idea of trying to orchestrate a fifth generation standard, after its successful notebook display effort. But he added that a PC industry group might not be the right body to push a standard for producing LCD panels targeted largely at the TV set market.

Berkoff told the SRI parlay that the FPD industry has narrowed motherglass to a few de facto common sizes - 680mm x 880mm and 730-mm x 920-mm. He urged that this momentum carry into finally standardizing on a single glass size for the 1-meter generation.

Young speculated that so many third and fourth generation fabs ended up with common motherglass sizes simply because that was the only type production equipment they could get in the tight market of the last several years. "Vendors were already oversold and simply didn't want to accept orders for odd-size motherglass equipment. However, since the LCD market is now turning soft, I expect equipment firms will again be willing to build odd-size systems - and LCD producers will probably still want off-size equipment."