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

To: Ian@SI who wrote (37168)	9/7/2000 9:39:19 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Foundry capacity will remain tight, even into next slowdown, says analyst By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Business News (09/07/00, 08:59:20 AM EDT) SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- While most segments in the chip industry could experience a slowdown in 2002, wafer-processing capacity in the silicon foundry business will remain tight for the next several years, resulting in higher prices for devices, cautioned an analyst from Semico Research Corp. during a forecasting conference here. "I expect wafer prices [from leading foundry vendors] will increase this quarter," said Joanne Itow, who tracks the industry segment for Phoenix-based Semico Research. During an interview after her presentation on Wednesday, Itow said capacity remains tight for most of the leading foundry suppliers despite aggressive investments in new fabs. She predicted capacity shortage will exist for 0.25-micron processes until 2004. "We will begin to see a tight supply of 0.18-micron capacity by 2002," she said in a presentation at the "Semico Forecast Workshop 2000" conference. The prediction comes as concerns grow about foundry shortages in the next couple of years. Last week, for example, officials from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) claimed the company was sold out of foundry capacity for 2000 and 2001 (see Aug. 29 story). Meanwhile, there is also a huge demand for processed wafers beyond the pure-play logic foundry sector. For example, the wafer demand for DRAMs with feature sizes of 0.18 micron is expected to jump from 2.73 million eight-inch equivalent wafers in 2001, to 3.14 million in 2002, to 3.37 million in 2003, to 3.77 million by 2004, according to Semico. However, wafer demand for flash memories is expected to drop from 1.41 million eight-inch equivalent units in 2001, to 1.03 million wafers in 2002, to 1.18 million in 2003, to 840,000 in 2004, said the market research firm.