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Technology Stocks : Dupont Photomasks (DPMI)
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To: Duane L. Olson who wrote (438)3/26/1998 8:21:00 AM
From: Katherine Derbyshire  Read Replies (1) of 955
 
>>K.D. Most Useful... We had been concentrating on two facets-- Increasing
complexity of chip designs, and increasing unit volumes -- as determinants of
increasing revenues for the photomask suppliers. It is clear from your reply that
we should have been giving proper weight to the NUMBER of designs as well....
Perhaps one does not need highly complex designs, and very expensive masks, to
ensure rapidly increasing revenue growth ( if I am interpreting your emphasis
properly) <<

Remember that expensive masks are also expensive to make. The profit margin on them may actually be less, since all kinds of R&D and capital costs have to be covered.

Don't get me wrong, though. Complex designs are still involved here. The foundries are offering leading edge processes, which means very complex masks. The difference is that they might have a dozen different ASIC designs running at once (12x as many masks!), rather than devoting the entire fab to, say, Pentiums.

If I were a mask house, I would view the availability of leading edge processes to fabless designers as very very good news. I'd also be scrambling like mad to build Taiwan regional capacity. (Most new foundries are going up on Taiwan.)

Katherine
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