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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pam who wrote (26800)	10/14/2004 4:14:14 PM
From: etchmeister	Respond to of 60323

Hi Pam at a relatively lower cost (vs. in the past) and hence been able to make higher semiconductor sales w/o proportionately increasing equipment costs to manufacture more wafers (most expensive to build a new wafer plant)? Shrink, shrink, shrink that's how the DRAM maker operate I suppose. The big advantage/incentive for chipmakers is to make transition to 300mm from 200 mm (some claim a 30% advantage in regards to capex) but on the other hand IC's are getting more complex (which is good for equipment makers); leading edge logic device feature 6 to 8 layers of interconnect. But the switch to 300mm should be a one time event; due to advantage of 300 mm the capex should shift downwards relative to IC sales but the trend should remain the same. But the switch to 300mm could stress "supply side" but than again the lower cost open up the doors to other applications. To me it seems usage of Flash is far more diversified compared to DRAM - about a year ago Samsung made a strategic move in "declaring" flash technology as the #1 technology driver while DRAM is second to flash. looking at Samsung it's one of the largest digital consumer "outfits" in the world Again all the credit for maintaing those charts goes to gottfried