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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Engel who wrote (83246)	6/10/1999 10:38:00 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 186894

Have to believe this news will turn the tide for Intel..out of the funk.....Intel commits to new process for making chips by Tom Quinlan Knight Ridder Newspapers Next time Andy Grove says it looks like rain, don't waste time getting your raincoat - buy stock in an umbrella company. When Intel yesterday formally announced its widely known timetable to begin making chips from larger silicon wafers, stock in equipment manufacturers skyrocketed. Intel had said numerous times in the past that it expected to move by 2002 to the new 300-millimeter wafers, whose size helps cut the cost of chip production. Still, its announcement was taken as the first solid commitment to the new technology by a major semiconductor company. As a result, Applied Material's stock went up $3 a share. KLA-Tencor went up by $5.25. Novellus Systems got a $4-a-share bump. Shares of Intel rose $1.44 to close at $53.13. The core of Intel's announcement was that it would outfit a state-of-the art manufacturing plant in its Hillsboro, Ore., campus with 300mm wafer technology. The upgrade also will include two other technological innovations: equipment to manufacture chips with more efficient copper wiring, rather than the standard aluminum, and equipment to etch smaller chips. Intel will start buying, installing and testing the 300mm technology within the next few months, said Mike Splinter, vice president and general manager of Intel's technology and manufacturing group. "In the past, there have been concerns about whether the equipment and tools would be production-worthy by (2002)," Splinter said. "With this announcement we are saying that we're confident 300mm will be ready by then." This vote of confidence has been a long time coming. Equipment manufacturers and Sematech - the chip-industry consortium created to foster new manufacturing technologies - have been touting 300mm technology since 1997. Compared with the current standard 200mm wafers, manufacturers could make almost 2 1/2 times as many chips on a single wafer using the larger size. That alone would be enough to cut the cost of chip manufacturing by as much as 30 percent, proponents said.