Once upon a time, microchips were (relatively) simple and so was servicing the machines used to make them: if a machine stopped working, you called a technician. We call this break/fix model Service 1.0.
As chips became more sophisticated, instead of just repairing the equipment, Service 2.0 aimed to make it faster and more efficient.
Today, chips are almost unimaginably complex and we’re on the brink of Service 3.0, where virtually everything in the fab is monitored to identify subtle shifts that could affect chip performance.
Applied Materials, Inc. was recognized as the largest supplier of photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing equipment in 2011 by VLSIresearch, a market research firm located in Santa Clara, Calif. This is the fourth consecutive year that Applied has been ranked number one in revenue in the PV solar market, and fiscal 2011 represented its third year of achieving more than $1 billion in sales in this market.*
As the market leader in PV manufacturing equipment, Applied currently supports over 1,800 solar manufacturing systems including screen printing, precision wafering, ion implantation and thin film deposition equipment at more than 200 customer sites worldwide through its Applied Global Services division. Applied also provides factory automation software and service solutions for optimizing solar cell efficiency and factory operations.