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

To: Ian@SI who wrote (37079)	8/30/2000 11:09:17 AM
From: willcousa	Respond to of 70976

beyond reaching the ultimate of curently forseeable chip architectures is the possibility of radical new ones which amat may or may not be a key part of. With amat's technical and financial resources my bet is that they will successfully make those changes.

To: Ian@SI who wrote (37079)	8/30/2000 12:46:01 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Sony to build 300-mm wafer fab for LCDs, CCDs in Japan By Anthony Cataldo EE Times (08/30/00, 11:15:13 AM EDT) TOKYO ( ChipWire) -- In another sign that Japanese electronics companies are loosening their purse strings for capital expenditures, Sony Corp. said it will spend about $943 million to build its first 300-mm wafer fabrication facility. The fab will allow the company to double its output of small,high-temperature polysilicon LCDs and CCDs. Sony will increase its capital spending more than 16 percent this year to $660 million to begin construction of the new facility on Japan's southern island of Kyushu this November. The plant is expected to begin production in October 2001. "Digital camcorders and digital cameras are growing rapidly so demand for CCDs is booming," said a Sony spokesman. "And also LCDs used in data projectors and rear-projection TVs are very popular in the U.S." When the plant goes on line, it will produce 300-mm (12-inch) quartz substrate wafers at a rate of 3,000 per month. Those substrates are cut into high-temperature polysilicon LCD panels measuring 2-inches and smaller. The facility will then start up a separate line that will produce wafers for CCDs at a rate of 2,000 wafers per month. By 2005, Sony expects to double its unit production of high-temperature polysilicon LCDs and CCDs to 850,000 units and 2.6 million units per month respectively, as the new plant reaches full capacity and as improvements are made to Sony's existing plant in Kokubu, where the products are now manufactured. The new fab on Kyushu will employ a so-called localized cleanroom, in which the main cleanroom operates at a less-stringent Class 1,000 rating while the wafers themselves are housed in ultra-clean Class 1 capsules. This production technique, which is now employed for the production of the graphics chips used in Sony's Playstation 2, will cost less than building and maintaining a 20,000-meter-squared main cleanroom, the Sony spokesman said.