The State-of-the-Art Ambiguity
>>On the conference call that you had with SanDisk...the President of SanDisk was saying that he didn't think your process technology was state of the art, and this report (a third party investment research report) did seem to say that your process is... that you have now state-of-the-art...I mean it is a little bit confusing to hear both sides.<<
Okay, let me clarify the ambiguity here because when you talk about the geometry, or the level of the baseline technology, then we definitely do not have the state-of-the-art because we take 'Fab 1' down to .35 micron and we do not intend to continue the migration (in 'Fab 1'), and you can find today in production .25 and .18 micron technology. So when you consider this aspect, then we are not state-of-the-art.
On the other hand, we have added unique features which are definitely state-of-the-art. The microFLASH is a state-of-the-art, very unique, novel technology, that actually takes 'Fab 1', even with the limited geometry that we have, and makes it competitive with the state-of-the-art technologies which are using .2 or .18 micron geometry's.
So this is the ambiguity...not state-of-the-art when you talk about the geometry...(but) state-of-the-art when you talk about what we can do with the specific technologies that we have developed.
Dr. Yoav Nissan-Cohen,
Co-CEO, Tower Semiconductor Ltd.
(With regards to a question raised in the most recent Quarterly Conference Call.) |
