Jess, let's review: (a) there is no name on the infrasture piece - who wrote it? What is his/her bias? However, look at this quote from Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research, the MOST respected semi research firm in the nation (and contrary to what King says, Infrastructure is a source of information, not the implied only source):
<<A year and a half ago, Cymer didn't have the capacity to meet demand, said G.
Dan Hutcheson, president of VLSI Research Inc. of San Jose, Calif. Customers
responded by double ordering, he said. Since then, the San Diego company has
increased its production, and customers have responded by reeling in
unnecessary orders, Hutcheson said.
"I don't see anything odd here other than an inventory fluctuation," Hutcheson told
Dow Jones.
"Canon and Nikon have debugging to do, but the roll out of the technology is going
as expected", Hutcheson said. Industry sources say the most visible problem
seems to be a complex interface Nikon has been working on to better coordinate
the function of the laser and stepper.
At the same time, demand remains strong. And it is expected to get stronger.
VLSI expects sales of deep ultraviolet steppers to climb from $459 million in 1996
to $1.366 billion this year and to $5.059 billion in 1998. Projections for 2000 show
the market at $8.044 billion.>>
Now, Jess, who are we going to believe, a NO NAME writing for infrastructure (which is suspect due to the outlandishness of the claims made) or Dan Hutcheson with VLSI Research whose firm stands to loose a TREMENDOUS amount of business if they are wrong? Who? I think Hutcheson over NO NAME article in infrastructure. Infrastructure no doubt asked one of their freelance writers to look into the subject, and he looked and discovered the competition. His reality is NOT the industry reality. Hutcheson represents the industry reality here. At least we know him and the level of accuracy of his past claims. |
