Coming CMP stories on Mar 2, 1998
Just what the doctor ordered?
For a global semiconductor industry that's sinking deeper into the
quicksand of the Asian economic crisis and DRAM overcapacity, the
recent wave of bad news may be just what the doctor ordered.
Observers are now beginning to say this bitter medicine is what's
needed to get the overheated chip business back on its growth curve.
"This crisis is curing the industry," Jean-Philippe Dauvin,
economist at SGS-Thomson Microelectronics tells Rob Lineback of
Semiconductor Business News. The feeling is that the industry could
be back on track by the end of the year. "We have the next two
quarters to digest the remaining overcapacity, and then it looks
like the good times will come back quickly," Dauvin says. There's
nothing like big cutbacks in capital spending to cure overcapacity;
some $20 billion has been cut or delayed.
Growth still name of (the Korean) game
Does all this sound like South Korean chipmakers cutting back on
capital spending this year to reduce their debt? I don't think so.
Hyundai Electronics, which just sold Symbios Logic, still has an IC
sales goal this year of $2.5 billion, up 25% from last year, Jack
Robertson writes in EBN.
And LG Semicon told reporters in Seoul this past week that it
intends to pass Micron Technology this year to become the world's
largest unit producer of 16-Mbit DRAMs by shipping 315 million of
them. That's a lot of chips!
Asians now following Micron
An urgent need to gain short-term profits from 16-megabit DRAMs is
forcing several top-tier South Korean and Japanese memory makers to
follow the lead of Micron Technology and invest in process
improvements to cut the cost of turning out the aging part. They're
doing it by shrinking the size of the die by going to 0.25-micron
line widths, the process used to build the 64-meg devices, Anthony
Cataldo writes in EE Times.
"It's tough [for the Asians DRAM makers] to make money now," said
IDC's Mario Morales. "Micron can get 1,000 die per wafer [with 0.3
micron], so it is making money at current price points now," he
said. Micron plans do even better when it goes to 0.25-micron later
this year. For now, everyone else is getting only 750 to 500 die per
wafer by using 0.4 or 0.35-micron processes.
Larry Dudash |
