This leadership in research also pushed each company to make significant commitments to lead the industry into new technology platforms. For example, when the industry needed to increase the size of 118 Open Innovation wafers from 150 to 200 millimeters to increase its yield of good chips
and to lower its costs, IBM worked closely with all the leading semiconductor equipment suppliers to develop the required equipment specifications for the new wafer size. IBM even funded research activities at many of the equipment companies, to spur them to adopt the 200-millimeter
wafer size—and IBM’s proposed specifications for that size.