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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (46638)	5/11/2001 9:48:45 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Sematech uses more aggressive roadmap There's a public roadmap for the chip industry, and a slightly more aggressive technology roadmap for internal use at International Sematech, according to officials in Austin, Tex., this past week. While fielding questions from journalists this week, Sematach's chief executive officer, Mark Melliar-Smith, said the U.S.-based consortium had its own internal roadmap for technology targets that were slightly ahead of the one that's published by the Semiconductor Industry Association. The SIA's International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) is updated yearly and often moves process nodes up a bit from the previous year. "International Sematech has its own internal roadmap, which we use to drive the delivery of programs," said Melliar-Smith, who is now scheduled in September to hand over his CEO title to Sematech's new president, Bob Helms (see May 8 story). The CEO said the consortium usually keeps some milestone targets for chip processes ahead of the public ITRS in order to make sure Sematech stays up with the needs of the chip industry. Actually, that's good because one reason for updating the SIA technology roadmap every year now is that chip makers keep pushing ahead of those targets too. --J.R.L.

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (46638)	5/11/2001 11:36:15 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Brian, re >IC suppliers heading for the 'Big Chill' with lower growth rates?< Thanks for posting this. Worrysome indeed. Gottfried

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (46638)	5/13/2001 12:03:21 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Interesting article: He's saying that revenue growth rates have declined in the last 5 years, compared to the "1970s and 1980s", and that this is due entirely to a decline in ASPs. I wonder what the numbers would look like, adjusted for inflation. That is, the 1970s and 1980s had a lot more inflation than the last 5 years, so it shouldn't be a surprise that semis couldn't increase prices. That doesn't explain all the change from +5%/Y to -2%/Y in ASPs, though.