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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (39903)	7/15/2003 5:41:53 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 72023

Damn the Economics, Full Speed Ahead By Jeff Chappell -- 7/14/2003 Electronic News Upturn or not, chip unit volumes are up, and life goes on in the semiconductor industry, and technology shrinks continue. While a number of chipmakers have yet to move to 0.13-micron production, the major players in the chip industry are poised to move 90nm technology into production, and get 65nm R&D under way. "One hundred thirty nanometer is kind of passé; 90nm is not really kicking into high gear yet for purchases, so people are reloading so they can be ready for 65nm," observed Dean Freeman, a principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest. The top tier chipmakers are all sampling pilot devices fabricated on 90nm fablines, Freeman said. "My understanding is that toolsets are pretty much set," he said of 90nm process technology. Just within the past few weeks, for example, Taiwanese foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) and Toshiba made 90nm process announcements. UMC said it has prototyped SRAM for High Bandwidth Access Inc. (HBA) on the foundry's 90nm process while Toshiba Corp., in conjunction with SanDisk Corp. announced the development of a cell structure that allows fabrication of 4Gbit NAND flash memory using 90nm design rules. UMC and HBA said that they had also validated analog and digital IP cores on the foundry's 90nm process; Toshiba and SanDisk plan to market the new NAND cell technology starting in the first half of 2004 in flash memory chips manufactured by their joint venture production fab. Intel Corp. is another good example. In April it began 0.13-micron flash production in Ireland, and plans to bring a 90nm logic process online next year in Ireland as well at its 300mm Fab 24. Excluding the fab activity in China, which, with the exception of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. is adding trailing edge capacity, the major projects slated to come online or begin placing equipment orders in the next few quarters are all 300mm, 0.13-micron or 90nm fabs. STMicroelectronics, Samsung and Intel, for example, all have 90nm fablines coming online in the immediate future, noted Freeman. But perhaps of more interest to equipment suppliers gathered here for this week's Semicon West trade show in San Francisco and San Jose are the fab projects that are slated to begin equipping fablines over this and the next quarters, such as the aforementioned Intel Fab 24. In addition to Intel, IBM, Micron, STMicro, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., UMCi, Samsung, Toshiba, Renasas, Elpida, Nanya, Sony and SMIC all have announced fab plans that would potentially require equipment orders placed in the current or next quarter. Of course, whether or not those orders get placed depends a lot on what happens to the economies in their respective countries and around the globe, and subsequently if chip unit volumes keep growing. If these factors hold true, the second half may bode well for equipment suppliers. In the meantime, 65nm R&D is beginning to get under way, and is sure to be theme for Semicon West this year. Japanese chipmaker Sony, for example, plans to build a 300mm fab, Fab 2, in Nagasaki during the current Japanese fiscal year, entering pilot production at the 90nm node and eventually going into volume production at the 65nm node. In the pre-Semicon West public relations blitz, 65nm process technology was a common thread. Etch process suppliers and competitors Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp., for example, both rolled out etch chambers or systems in recent weeks geared for the 65nm node. Applied and Nikon Corp. also put out press releases about their chemical mechanical planarization technology and 65nm node applications.