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Technology Stocks : Atmel - the trend is about to change -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: onurbius who wrote (11739)	9/21/2000 12:18:21 AM
From: Kent Rattey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13565

Atmel to use ASM Litho machines in North Tyneside Sep 18 2000 12:49PM LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Atmel Corp. , the U.S. chip manufacturer, said on Monday it would put $800 million worth of equipment in Britain's North Tyneside plant it had bought from Germany's electronics company Siemens . "We'll invest some $800 million in the next two and a half to three years," said Finance Director Donald Colvin. The company would use the money to buy steppers and etchers for 0.18 and 0.25 micron technology. Some machines were coming from other Atmel plants, but Colvin said his company would also buy new equipment from Netherlands-based ASM Lithography , which is challenging Japan's Nikon <7731.T> for the title of the world's largest semiconductor equipment company. He did not want to say how large the orders would be, but said they would not make a "huge difference" for ASM Lithography. ASM Lithography was not available for comment. Atmel would use the plant, or "fab" as it is known in the chip industry, to produce a wide range of products, from non-volatile memory chips for smart cards and digital camera's to chips for communications devices such as mobile phones. Many of these chips belong to the fastest growing sectors in the semiconductor industry, expanding by 50 percent or more every year, said industry analyst Andrew Jamerson at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. Siemens was making computer memory chips in the North Tyneside plant, and had to close it in 1998 when prices for these chips fell drastically in a production glut. Prices for these so-called DRAM-chips have since recovered, but demand is still growing at a much slower pace of of 15 to 18 percent a year. (additional reporting from Philip Blenkinsop in Amsterdam)

To: onurbius who wrote (11739)	9/21/2000 12:44:18 PM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13565

onurbius, it's simple. As a photographer, assuming you use a digital camera or camcorder, you must been using flash memory cards (Smart media, compact flash, multimediacard, or a PCMCIA Type II or III flash memory card). The most popular flash cards today have the capacity ranging from 8 MB to 128 MB. (I do see a PCMCIA card with 1 GB capacity in the hands of a KODAK professional photographer in the recent SEABAL Conference exhibits). A 64MB card can hold about 350 digital photo assuming a 640x480 resolution .jpg file uses about 180 kb memory, which is the file I get using my SONY TRV900 DV camcorder. For a KODAK/Nikon Professional DCS 660 digital camera with a resolution of 3024x2008 that uses 6 megapixel CCD and costs about $15,000, the digital photo file could be as large as 18 mega bytes before compressed. Well, you know what would occur, when every digital camera has a resolution of 3000x2000 or even higher (when it becomes affordable eventually) instead of today's 640x480.