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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (38130)	10/11/2000 10:32:45 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

TSMC says tight foundry market is loosening up slightly By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Business News (10/11/00, 08:25:31 AM EDT) SAN JOSE -- Amid the grand opening of its new U.S. headquarters here, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) indicated that overall wafer demand is beginning to loosen up in the worldwide foundry business. "Our fabs are still full," said Edward Ross, president of the company's U.S. subsidiary, TSMC North America. "We are still not able to give everything that everybody wants," said Ross in an interview with SBN at TSMC's large, new Silicon Valley campus here. "[But] we are moving towards a normal supply/demand balance. "I would say that the frenzy [in the foundry business] has toned down," Ross added. Ross insisted that TSMC's overall business is not slowing down, but hinted that conditions in the silicon foundry business are changing by small but noticeable degree in the marketplace compared to a year ago or earlier in 2000. Just a few months ago, for example, foundry vendors were scrambling for capacity, reportedly forcing them to turn away customers by the droves. Even some foundry companies, including TSMC, claimed they were fully booked at least until the beginning of 2002-and beyond. Industry analysts and fabless-IC design houses indicated that foundry capacity remains extremely tight right now, especially for wafers based on mainstream 0.25-micron process technologies. But cutting-edge process technologies like 0.18-micron and below are not astight--if not easy to come by at the present time--because of the sharp buildup of new capacity and the time it takes to finish advanced ICs for those advanced foundry technologies, analysts said. Overall business remains robust at TSMC, but there are still some "pockets" of weakness in applications, especially in the PC-oriented chip sector, Ross said. Other semiconductor markets remain hot, such as local-area networking, wireless, and related communications areas, he added. "There has been a lessening of the demand in the PC area," Ross said. "The networking segment is still strong." Despite what appears to be some warning signs in the market, TSMC insisted that it is on track in terms of its forecasts for sales and wafer-output in 2000. Last month, TSMC raised its forecast for revenues to $5.30 billion in 2000, which would be an increase of 125.4% from $2.35 billion in 1999 (see Sept. 26 story). "We are still on course," Ross said, adding the company has no plans to alter its aggressive fab-capacity expansion efforts. The company is still on plan to produce devices on its initial 300-mm wafers by year's end in a pilot line located in Tainan, Taiwan (see March 30 story). And the pure-play foundry giant is pushing aggressively to produce customers' products with a cutting-edge, 0.13-micron technology by the first quarter of 2001 (see Sept. 11 story).