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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Big Bucks who wrote (13731)	12/21/1997 7:10:00 PM
From: Paul V.	Respond to of 70976

Big Buck, >Another way is to diversify the product portfolio and produce ASICs or other foundry chips, where the market is not so soft. There is no consumer market available yet for sub 0.25uM devices so there is no real need to produce advanced products with limited short/mid term profit potential.< IYHO, how will this appoach impacts bottom line in the shortrun and longrun and how long? >300mm pilot lines will take 1-2 years to become fully functional and the equipment sets required will undergo numerous productivity and enhancement upgrades. It would be a mistake to buy the newest 300mm equipment till all the bugs are worked out or the cost of improving and upgrading it to a "production worthy" status would be cost prohibitive, both from an equipment and engineering resource perspective.< How will this appoach impacts bottom line in the shortrun and longrun? >Will fabs upgrade? Eventually. Why will they upgrade? To improve process capability, yields, and PROFITS. Is it imperative that new fabs be built today to handle 300mm and sub 0.25uM device geometries? NO! But in 1-2 years YES. Good response, Big Buck. Paul V.

To: Big Bucks who wrote (13731)	12/21/1997 7:23:00 PM
From: davesd	Respond to of 70976

Buck, any new fabs will have the latest and greatest production worthy tools...but I doubt that FABs are going to retire 200mm, .30u tools anytime soon to replace them will 200mm, .25u tools. At this point in theory we can say that FABs can make more chips with .25u technology. However, we have no idea of the yeild and the COO of .25u tools vs .30u tools. Maybe, when we take all the variable into consideration....it's cheaper to make DRAM with .30u than it is with the current .25u tools...maybe that is why DRAM production is still .3/.35u. The .25u tools may still need some improvement in the yeild area. dave