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

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (6389)	7/6/2003 2:47:49 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

BRCM isn't on your list of investment grade chip stocks right? Cisco loves the company, and since broadband is starting to ramp I would think there would be something there?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (6389)	7/7/2003 9:28:03 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

TSMC fab utilization climbs along with June sales Semiconductor Business News (07/07/03 09:10 a.m. EST) HSINCHU, Taiwan -- The much-watched wafer fab utilization rate at leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd., a bellwhether of the semiconductor market, climbed to 86 percent in the second quarter of 2003 from 67 percent in the first quarter, the company said Monday (July 7, 2003). Although leading-edge capacity had previously been said to be in short supply this across-the-board figure could be an indicator of imminent price hikes as the supply of particular chips and manufacturing capacity becomes constrained. The upward move in fab utilization was revealed along with net sales for June 2003 at TSMC, which totaled NT$17,846 million (about $519 million), a 14.3 percent increase on the same month a year before and a 6.2 percent increase over May 2003 (see June 9 story), the company said.

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (6389)	7/7/2003 10:54:15 AM
From: runes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25522

<<unit demand has generally been increasing monotonically and unit capacity has been the fluctuating variable that effects price and leads to cycles.>> <<supply, not demand, was the key to most semiconductor cycles in the past and will be in the future.>> For the record, unit capacity has also been increasing pretty monotonically as well. No surprise that supply and demand have the same gross characteristics. But the devil is in the details or in this case in the accelerations and decelerations of the demand that create an imbalance between supply and demand. ...Or to be mathematical about it - demand is the independent variable to which the supply reacts (via my "mechanism"). No one would advocate adding more supply in order to boost weak demand. ...Yes the bust is triggered by "oversupply" but what actually happens is that a capacity boom is triggered by accelerating demand. And then that demand decelerates but the time lag effect keeps the capacity increasing long after the demand growth has slacked off. <<I think the magnitude of the demand curve will get past the the unique boom/bust of the bubble and will return to even stronger growth rates.>> ...?? I'm not sure quite what you are trying to say here. But yes - eventually the hypergrowth will dissipate as Moore's curve flattens out. At we will be left with the more tepid boom-bust cycles of the auto industry. ...But I still contend that 1) the shrinks and Moore's law are still trundling on and 2) we still have the 300mm/automation transition to go through. So, no, I don't believe that we are at the end of the road...Yet. <<the bubble of '98-'00 was not a typical semiconductor cycle>>. ...No cycle is ever typical. But yes, the last one felt like a perfect storm. On the other hand the previous cycle felt like the worst thing possible ('89 - 92). Economy in the dumps, massive layoffs, jobless recovery, Iraq war, the "PC era" was "over". ...Who's to say that the next boom bust won't be even more severe? <<...by influencing the supply (capacity) dynamic to be more incremental.>> It is possible that the foundries will form some kind of a cartel (ala OPEC) in order to divide up market share and boost prices by limiting supply. But nothing like that has happened yet. ...You still have a significant number of players (10+) who are all vying to gain market share. Which means that when the demand surpasses capacity they will all rush to be the first to bring new, lower cost capacity online. Time will tell. Sooner or later this insanity must come to an end. Either the demand will abate (the end of Moore's law) or the supply(ers) will game the system to give themselves controllable profits.