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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey D who wrote (34534)	3/9/2000 12:51:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Korea's Anam foundry to expand capacity, add 0.18-micron process By Jack Robertson Semiconductor Business News (03/09/00, 09:16:06 AM EDT) CHANDLER, Ariz. -- The Anam Semiconductor fab in Korea has added Atmel, Alcatel and Ericsson as foundry customers, in addition to making digital signal processors for Texas Instruments Inc. John Boruch, president and CEO of Amkor Technology Inc., which now owns a 42% stake in Anam, said several other new foundry countries have also been added, but he cannot disclose their names at present. In an interview in his Chandler office on Wednesday, Boruch said the Anam fab will also expand production from the current 20,000 wafer starts a month to 30,000 monthly by the end of the year. He also said upgraded equipment is being installed that will take the fab down to 0.18-micron processing from its current quarter micron design rules. Boruch said the fab is now sold out for the next several years -- even with the higher capacity to be added Ever since starting production two years ago, the Anam fab exclusively produced DSPs under contract to Amkor, which in turn sold the chips to TI. According to Boruch, the fab will make a variety of device types for its new customers, including DSPs, flash memory, ASICs, and telecommunications chips. He expected the Anam fab to generate more than $500 million annual revenue when operating at full capacity. The fab now is essentially the main business operation of Anam, as the Korean firm's four chip-assembly and test operations have been purchased by Amkor (see Feb. 28 story ). The U.S. packaging firm also made a $459 million investment in Anam in addition to $950 milllion purchase of the three remaining assembly plants it didn't already own. Last year Amkor bought the leading-edge Anam assembly plant for $600 million. Boruch said the fab partners are now looking to add a second frontend foundry -- either by acquiring one of many empty fab shells around the world, or acquiring an existing fab, and forming a joint venture to take over a portion of an existing fab.