Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (15197)	6/7/2005 8:56:21 AM
From: matt dillabough	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 25522

TSM Taiwan Semi: Wafer Start Activity Showing Signs of Strength - Amtech (9.67 ) Amtech's checks indicate that May's wafer start activity level stayed strong at TSM running at April's level of 270k wafers per month. There are modest signs of near-term optimism from chipmakers balanced by a measured level of caution given the strong dependency on macro variables. Notable wafer start strength was seen from GNSS (up 50% M/M), NVDA (up 30% M/M) and OVTI, while SSTI and SGTL pulled back on wafer start activity in May. The firm believes the current improvement in wafer start activity level reflects some inventory restocking along with increased optimism in the macro-environment going into 2H05. A healthy dose of caution still remains among the chip customers as a number of external macro variables can still impact their chip demand forecast

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (15197)	6/7/2005 10:34:17 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Applied Materials Could Gain Market Share In 2006 06.07.05, 10:29 AM ET Deutsche Bank Securities maintained a "buy" rating and $18 target price on Applied Materials (nasdaq: AMAT - news - people ), citing the company's new inspection tool designed to compete with KLA-Tencor (nasdaq: KLAC - news - people ). "As widely anticipated, Applied Materials launched a new brightfield inspection tool to compete with KLA-Tencor in the single largest process control market segment," Deutsche Bank said. Applied Materials said its new solid state laser platform gives it a technical advantage over competitors such as Hitachi (nyse: HIT - news - people ), Negevtech and TSK. "We believe it is too early to judge the merits of the system on the limited data shared," Deutsche Bank said. The research firm said transitions take time in the market, even if Applied Materials' new UVision technology is superior to currently available tools. "Accordingly, we don't expect to see noticeable market share changes in 2005, but rather view this as a 2006 story," Deutsche Bank said. The research firm reiterated fiscal 2005 and 2006 earnings-per-share estimates on Applied Materials of 64 cents and 80 cents, respectively.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (15197)	6/9/2005 1:11:39 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

HP says it can reduce impact of chip defects Published: June 8, 2005, 9:00 PM PDT By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com In the future, microprocessors will need a better backup plan, says Hewlett-Packard. The computing giant has revealed another aspect of its crossbar switch technology that it hopes will replace transistors as the main off-on switch in semiconductors. The idea involves greatly enhancing the demulitplexer, a device that allows cell phones to communicate through different channels when the primary channel is down, into chips made of crossbar switches. These chips will also contain approximately 50 percent more interconnects--the microscopic wires that connect the millions (and soon billions) of transistors on a chip--than today's processors. By adopting these two ideas, HP hopes, chip designers will be able to skirt the major problem of defect density facing semiconductor manufacturers in the nanotechnology era and radically reduce costs. Simply put, increasing the number of transistors on a chip increases the odds that the chip will have fatal defects. Meanwhile, the shrinking size of these transistors means that it will be increasingly expensive and difficult to ferret out these defects. "By using a crossbar architecture and adding 50 percent more wires as an 'insurance policy,' we believe it will be possible to fabricate nano-electronic circuits with nearly perfect yields even though the probability of broken components will be high," Stan Williams, HP senior fellow and director, Quantum Science Research at HP Labs, said in a statement. Inserting redundant circuits is a common practice in semiconductor manufacturing. The many problems Transmeta had when it came out with its 5800 Crusoe chip in 2001 were due to a lack of redundancy, many sources at the time said. HP, though, is substantially expanding on the concept and tailoring it for its crossbar structures. The regular, predictable structure of crossbars makes them fairly well suited for demultiplexing, HP said. Many of the mathematical ideas behind crossbars derive from theories devised by Claude Shannon in the 1950s. More details will be provided in an article published by the Institute of Physics. The race to find replacements or enhancements for transistors has accelerated in the past few years because of the increasing difficulty of following Moore's Law, which states that engineers can double the number of transistors on a chip every two years. Williams said in a recent interview that the 40 years of steadily increasing computing performance by adding more transistors to chips is the greatest technological achievement of civilization. HP is trying to get chipmakers to adopt crossbar latches for the 32-nanometer generation of chips, which are due toward the end of the decade. HP will charge royalties under license to semiconductor makers who adopt the design.