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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (28778)	2/23/1998 9:08:00 AM
From: Big Joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53903

Skeeter, About US 40 bn will be spent by Taiwan Semi and United Microelectronics which have little interests in making DRAMs. About 4 bn will be spent on by Macronix which makes non-volatile memories and microcontrollers. Neither one of these three companies have the interests, technology or know-how to make DRAMs. This leaves about only USD 16 bn over next 10 years for fabs or about 8~10 8" fabs for 10 years i.e. 1 8" fab per year. Most of these planned investments were announced in early '97 when most Taiwanese IC companies believe DRAM will turn around in late '97. However, from my understanding, no one is talking about these huge investments any more except Taiwan Semi and United Micro which are the only profitable and cash-rich ones. For the other IC companies in Taiwan, let's see what happen to them. TI-Acer: TI is thinking of pulling out of this one. This means no more technology support and probably no more DRAMs for TI-Acer. Powerchip: Both this company and its parent company (Umax) are having financial problems. Vanguard - Its parent company is Taiwan Semi which is thinking of making Vanguard an IC contract manufacturer as well. Mosel Vitelic - One of the only companies that may go through with its plan. Winbond - Although it has a JV with Toshiba to manufacture DRAMs, most of its expansion will go to either foundry or microcontrollers. As you can see, not a lot of this "60 bn" will be put in DRAM making. Regards, BJ

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (28778)	2/23/1998 9:15:00 AM
From: Big Joe	Respond to of 53903

Skeeter, In addition to the above information, there is a lot of DRAM capacity coming out this year in Taiwan (the investment was started nearly 2 years ago) My estimate is about 60,000 wafers/month for 64MB DRAMs by the end of this year. However, this is about it. By the way, none of the Taiwanese companies have the technology to manufacture DRAMs and these companies always have to depend on someone else to chip in the technology through joint venture. Therefore, if most of the DRAM companies want to cut down DRAM production, naturally, they will want their partners in Taiwan to do so as well. Regards, BJ