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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (4846)	1/9/2003 8:19:54 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

Toshiba To Mass-Produce World's Smallest Chips In Spring Wednesday January 8, 10:50 pm ET TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Toshiba Corp. (J.TOS or 6502) plans to begin this spring mass production of the world's smallest semiconductors with circuit widths of 90 nanometers. The launch will come well ahead of Toshiba's global rivals. The semiconductors will be much smaller than conventional 130-nanometer chips, allowing a significant boost to processing speeds and savings in energy consumption. The world's top two chip makers - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) of the U.S. and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea - are slated to start mass-production of 90-nanometer chips this summer. The move underscores Toshiba's aim to lead the industry in cutting-edge chip process technology, a company spokesman said Thursday. "We would like to launch the fastest system LSIs (large-scale integrated circuits) in the market" ahead of other makers, he said. Toshiba's new 90-nanometer system chips will be embedded with dynamic random access memory (DRAM), the company said. Toshiba plans to produce the new chips at its plant in Oita, southern Japan. The chips will be used for digital consumer electronics and game devices, the company said. NEC Electronics Corp. - a new semiconductor unit of NEC Corp. (NIPNY or 6701) - said Thursday it plans to begin mass-producing 90-nanometer chips in the July- September quarter in Kanagawa Prefecture, west of Tokyo. NEC Electronics aims to ship Y4 billion worth of the advanced system chips for use in high-performance computer servers in fiscal 2003 starting in April. The company plans to raise sales of such system chips to Y25 billion in fiscal 2005, expanding the use into digital consumer electronics, it said. -By Kanji Ishibashi, Dow Jones Newswires; 813-5255-2929; kanji.ishibashi@ dowjones.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (4846)	1/9/2003 1:13:39 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

Tool orders are flat except at Intel, Nanya, Samsung Semiconductor Business News (01/08/03 09:03 p.m. EST) PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--Fab-tool orders are projected to be flat in the first quarter of 2003 in spite of some new and aggressive procurement activities at Intel, Nanya, and Samsung, according to a report from U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. “To date, we have been projecting overall semi equipment industry orders would be about flat from Q4 2002 to Q1 2003,” according to the report. “Our analysis showed that Intel fab 24 in Ireland, continuation of aggressive spending by Samsung, growth in Japan, and smaller orders from others would support a flat order scenario.” Another major buyer of tools is Taiwanese DRAM maker Nanya Technology Corp., which is in the midst of building a 300-mm fab with Germany's Infineon Technologies AG. “We have recently learned that NanYa may be moving forward more aggressively on its new 300-mm DRAM fab in Taiwan, which is a joint venture with Infineon,” the report said. “The original schedule was for production in mid-2004, which reportedly may be moved up to the end of 2003,” it said. “If this is true, then orders for the first line of production would probably fall in Q1 2003 versus our previous expectation of Q2 2003,” the report said. Given that this could be about $400-$500 million of orders to the industry, this project alone could drive Q1 2003 orders from being flat sequentially to being up at least 10%,” it added. The Minneapolis, Minn.-based investment banking firm also projects that capital spending in the IC industry will be flat in 2003 over 2002. Meanwhile, which tool companies will benefit at Nanya? “The two companies that we believe would benefit the most from Nanya would be Applied Materials for large cap and Asyst for small cap,” the report said. Applied “has historically been a strong supplier to both Nanya and Infineon. This project alone should enable [Applied] to generate meaningful order growth from its January quarter to its April quarter,” it added