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To: Gottfried who wrote (41000)	12/20/2000 10:09:14 PM
From: BWAC	Respond to of 70976

You are hired! Thats the spin they will put on it when the Fed eases off on the interest rates and the PE multiples expand. Expand from 10 to 20 again. If earnings don't absolutely die, that spells up from here. The market is awash in misinformation and misdirected statements.

To: Gottfried who wrote (41000)	12/20/2000 10:27:40 PM
From: StanX Long	Respond to of 70976

Great example. Thanks for the laugh. Stan

To: Gottfried who wrote (41000)	12/21/2000 3:39:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Taiwan's SIS breaks ground on 300-mm fab Semiconductor Business News (12/21/00 14:15 p.m. EST) HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Continuing on its path to become an integrated device manufacturer (IDM), Taiwanese PC chip set maker Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SIS) here today broke gound on its first 300-mm wafer fab and product R&D center in the Tainan Science-based Industrial Park in southern Taiwan. The new 300-mm fab--which was originally announced by the Hsinchu-based company last year--is a 0.15-micron plant that will be completed in 2002. The total cost of the project is $1.6 billion. Capable of making 20,000 wafers a month, the fab will produce the company's line of existing products, such as PC chip sets, graphic ICs, and communications devices. It will also develop future products, such as system-on-a-chip lines, among others. In the future, SIS hopes to build two 300-mm fabs, in an effort to reduce its dependence on foundries. "The Tainan [fab] program signifies our commitment to stay competitive for the long term and will be watershed for years to come," said Samuel Liu, president and chief executive of SIS. With its 300-mm plant, some analysts believe that SIS will eventually enter the silicon foundry business. SIS officials have repeatedly denied those assertions. Still, SIS' 300-mm fab plans represent the company's latest effort to transform itself from a fabless-IC design house into an IDM. Formed in 1987, SIS made a name for itself by selling low-cost chip sets for the PC industry. Most recently, though, the company has shifted its focus from commodity core logic devices to integrated chip sets. These products combine the core logic, graphics, and communications functions on the same device. The company is also making a push in the double-data-rate (DDR) SDRAM chip set market as well. While SIS is one of the leaders in the integrated chip set arena, the company now faces some new and stiff competition. Acer Labs, Intel, Nvidia, and Via Technologies are in various stages of developing and selling integrated chip sets. SIS faces another, and perhaps bigger, challenge. For years, the company was fabless and relied on various foundries to make its products. At one time or another, SIS had foundry relationships with Chartered, Hyundai, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, United Microelectronics, among others. Today, SIS continues to use foundries for a large portion of its product output. But unable to garner enough capacity over the years, SIS in the late-1990s took matter into its own hands by making a dramatic decision: it wanted to build its own fab. Late last year, SIS began ramping up its initial fab--a 0.25- to 0.18-micron, 8-inch plant located in Hsinchu. At present, this fab is producing some 14,000 wafers a month. SIS will ramp up the facility to 20,000 wafers at some point in the future. Recently, reports surfaced in Taiwan that SIS would sell this fab to United Microelectronics Corp. However, UMC and SIS denied those reports.