David,
Some semi related news.
Hitachi cuts 200 jobs at Texas memory chip plant
IRVING, Texas, March 24 (Reuters) - Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. said on Tuesday it was restructuring its computer memory chip operations in Texas by shifting to more profitable products and that as a result it will lay off 200 employees, or 20 percent of its U.S. workforce.
Hitachi, a unit of Japan's Hitachi Ltd <6501.T>, said it was taking the action as part of a broad effort to cut the company's exposure to the highly volatile market for computer memory chips known as DRAMs. A week ago, the parent company announced plans to end domestic Japanese production of DRAMs.
Like other major computer memory chip suppliers, Hitachi has experienced substantial losses from the combination of a glut of DRAM chips on the market and the resulting steep erosion in their price.
Hitachi was hit hardest among Japanese chip makers by the crash in DRAM prices seen in recent years due to its heavy dependence on the computer memory chip business, a highly competitive market known for its cut-throat pricing wars.
The company said it plans to eliminate the jobs for about 200 of its 700 production workers and support staff at its Irving, Texas plant. Hitachi Semiconductor employs another 300 employees at a California facility, or 1,000 in all.
Officials said the company will begin immediately to shift from computer memory chips, which store information, to more profitable logic chips, which are used to manage information. It said that by the end of 1998, it expected to boost its production of non-memory chips such as microprocessors and microcontrollers to 40 percent of its production from its current 18 percent level.
11:39 03-24-98
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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Hitachi to produce power semiconductors in Russia
.c Kyodo News Service
TOKYO, March 24 (Kyodo) - Hitachi, Ltd. said Tuesday it will establish a joint venture company in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in April to produce power semiconductor devices.
The joint company, Hitachi-Svetlana Power Electronics, will produce 2- and 3.3-kilovolt insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules, primarily for traction applications such as inverters in the rolling stock sphere, Hitachi said.
With the Russian government accelerating that country's rolling stock modernization program, the market for the high-voltage IGBTs has good growth potential.
Hitachi developed the world's first 2-kilovolt IGBT in 1992 and has since devised a 3.3-kilovolt IGBT.
Hitachi-Svetlana will be capitalized at 1 million rubles (about 22 million yen), with Hitachi holding a 51% stake. The remaining 49% will be put up by AOOT Svetlana, a leading maker of semiconductor products in Russia, and other Russian partners.
The joint company is expected to begin shipments later this year and bring annual production to 100,000 units within a few years. Initially, major components will be brought in from Japan for local assembly.
AP-NY-03-24-98 0647EST
Copyright 1998 The Kyodo News Service.
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Bond market prophesying doom for Japan rating /RPT
By Andrew Morse
TOKYO, March 24 (Reuters) -- Listen to Japan's bond market and you will hear the financial markets' equivalent of a Greek chorus.
Like the singers in ancient dramas who prophesy the tragedies to befall mighty heroes, Japanese bond traders and investors are chanting a steady dirge of doom for the country's credit prospects.
After watching the economy sputter for seven years, witnessing the collapse of "bubble economy" equity and property values and presiding over a rapidly deteriorating government fiscal situation, the bond market has begun to focus on one of the worst of all possible scenarios -- a ratings cut for Japan's AAA sovereign debt.
"We are on our way to becoming a run-of-the-mill country," said a trader at a regional bank, who asked that neither he nor his institution be identified. "Japan will be downgraded."
Behind the pessimism are expectations the government will cut taxes and borrow more to boost the economy, exacerbating budget deficits that have run to around seven percent of gross domestic product and a gross debt to GDP ratio that Merrill Lynch estimates will soon top 100 percent.
Japanese government bond yields remain at low levels by any historic measure -- the yield on the key 182nd 10-year JGB closed at 1.495 percent on Monday -- but talk of a downgrade has begun to rattle the world's second-largest bond market.
JGBs yields had previously tumbled to a record low of 1.470 percent, before being spiked by reports by two influential strategists -- Takeshi Fujimaki of J.P. Morgan and Atsushi Mizuno of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell -- that mentioned the possibility of a downgrade.
Ratings agency officials in Tokyo said they were not considering clipping their rating for Japan, the world's largest creditor nation, although they acknowledge the degenerating state of the economy and the pressures on the banking system.
"Japan's triple-'A' sovereign remains secure, despite the scale of the financial system's stress," said U.S. agency Standard & Poor's Corp in a report late last year that cited the country's strong domestic and foreign reserves and its relatively low government debt.
Moody's Investors Service also maintains Japan's AAA rating with a stable outlook.
But that is not enough to dispel the ratings chatter in the bond market, even if few participants say a downgrade is inevitable.
"Ultimately, I think JGBs are junk bonds," David Roche, president of London-based private research house International Strategy, told Reuters Financial Television recently.
"Effectively, they are backed by the government, but the government has wasted so much of Japanese savings on absurd projects that I think people will eventually realise that the asset backing of JGBs is poor," Roche said.
A downgrade, if it were to happen, would only make Japan's already staggering problems worse, analysts say.
Interest rates would rise as creditors demanded higher yields. The higher interest rates could in turn crimp borrowing, already contracted by banks' unwillingness to lend.
The result: Sluggish growth or no growth at all.
Strategists say the loud calls to use public money to prop up the economy and the stock market could trigger higher interest rates even without a downgrade.
They worry that the government's next economic stimulus package, due out later this week, will contain spending pledges and tax cuts that will push the country's budget towards a fiscal abyss.
"The recent unquestioning argument for fiscal expansion (can be) blamed on the same blindness as during the 'bubble' period," says J.P. Morgan's Fujimaki.
"It is very dangerous that the incautious call for fiscal expansion becomes dominant when the fiscal status of the nation is very critical. The nation's budget may collapse completely."
That is a prospect that worries Deutsche's Mizuno, as well. "The budget could grow out of control," he said. "That is the worst case scenario."
21:05 03-23-98
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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Samsung Launches Global High Performance ASIC Thrust; Adds Embedded SuperSRAM, Flash, Mixed-Signal Cores
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 1998--Samsung Semiconductor today announced worldwide availability of a full suite of high-performance ASIC design services, embedded memory, intellectual property and mixed-signal process technology optimized for System-On-a-Chip (SOC) integration.
With the addition of embedded SuperSRAM and Flash, as well as mixed-signal building blocks such as PLLs, CODECs, ADCs and DACs, Samsung's Intelligence-On-Silicon initiative is moving aggressively to address the core-based SOC market, an opportunity that is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of over 40% between 1996 and 2001, according to Farzad Zarrinfar, associate director of ASIC marketing at Samsung in San Jose. Samsung expects to see its ASIC revenues triple over the next year.
The new products and services offered by Samsung through Intelligence-On-Silicon are specifically directed at communications, portable computing and consumer SOC applications. These and other high-performance SOC applications require the strengths of Samsung*s Intelligence-On-Silicon: lower cost, maximized bandwidth and minimum power dissipation. Samsung now offers the most complete set of Embedded Memory-based high performance SOC solutions available and will drive the growth of SOC design among its customers worldwide.
"Our customers need access to the full range of high performance process technology, memory and mixed signal cores in order to move to a System-On-a-Chip design methodology," Noel Park, Vice President/General Manager, System LSI Group, said. "The depth and breadth of our Intelligence-On-Silicon design support and manufacturing process technology allow our customers to take full advantage of the cost and performance benefits of SOC designs."
Samsung's ASIC Technology
Samsung's ASIC process is driven by fabrication of the 21164 Alpha microprocessor which can clock up to 600 MHz. Digital ASIC technology is complemented by the addition of new mixed-signal technology that allows the integration of pure analog or analog/digital functions on a single chip. This technology supports an operational voltage of 2.5V to 3.3V, with 3.3V/5V standard and optional dual oxide enhancement for true 5V I/Os.
The new embedded SuperSRAM and Flash capability is an extension of Samsung's Merged DRAM and Logic (MDL) efforts and provides a high performance memory alternative to package memory components. SuperSRAM and Flash are optimized to provide significant performance, cost saving, and reliability benefits for SOC design.
Embedded Flash
The embedded Flash memory is used for code storage and data retention for applications such as cellular phones, pagers, telecom systems, answering machines, network equipment, PC peripherals, GPS, HDD, ADSL modem, digital camera, reconfigurable systems and set-top boxes. The embedded Flash technology is based on Samsung's standard CMOS supplemented with six additional mask steps which is implemented using field enhancing tunneling injector split-gate architecture.
This architecture is optimized for security, high speed and high data retention. This flash technology achieves its high reliability with a much thicker oxide layer than that which is used by most flash architectures. This technology has resolved 'erase disturb,' because all bytes are simultaneously in the same page and each page is completely isolated from every other page during any erase operation. This NOR-based Flash cell employs poly-to-poly Fowler-Nordheim tunneling for erasing and source side Channel Hot Electron injector for writing. An on-chip charge pump generates internal high voltage on the word line during erase on the source line during writing. Flash has a read access time of below 150 nanoseconds at 3.3V with endurance of over 100,000 cycles guaranteed and 1 million cycles typical with 20-year data retention at 125 degrees C.
"Because of the added functionality in system reprogrammability afforded by embedded Flash, it will continue to be an important enabler of SOC applications," said Alan Niebel, analyst with Semico Research, Phoenix, AZ, who recently completed a study of the embedded Flash market which shows tremendous growth potential for this type of application.
Embedded SuperSRAM
The embedded SuperSRAM technology used by Samsung is a synchronous SRAM with 4-transistor cell architecture optimized for small die size and power reduction, while it maximizes performance in SOC designs such as Ethernet Switches, where lower power, lower cost, and optimized performance is critical.
SuperSRAM is used for cache or packet-buffer memory in network switches, routers, cellular base stations, and multi-processing servers. Embedded SRAM, for 1-4Mbits, beats discrete parts in the critical memory metrics of bandwidth, granularity, transmission line effects, and power consumption.
Discrete SRAMs with 4-byte-wide data buses run at speeds of 200MHz with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 800 Mbytes/second. At 100MHz, embedded SRAMs with 32-byte-wide (256 bit) data buses, will reach a bandwidth of 3.2 Gbytes/second.
The finer granularity of embedded SRAM translates to less money/area/power wasted for unused memory cells when the SRAM blocks are configured to an exact number of bits and word. Power consumption is one fourth that of discrete SRAMs because at least one set of input and output pins must be driven for a packaged SRAM to communicate with a logic chip, but an embedded memory only has to drive the wires on the chips itself.
The average size of the embedded SRAM cells has been reduced to 10.2 micron 2 by using two lightly dropped poly resistors placed on top of four transistors to keep the SRAM cell small. Cost of the die is reduced because it is based on a standard CMOS process with five additional mask steps. Also, Samsung uses a self-aligned contact process that closes the spaces between transistors. SuperSRAM is supported by BIST (Built-In-Self-Test) which is provided by Samsung as a soft core, along with IDDQ and scan-ATPG test methodology. SuperSRAM's memory BIST technology reduces time to market by eliminating test vector generation at the system level.
Samsung's Core Library
Samsung continues to add to its library of analog and mixed-signal cores, including CODECs, RAMDAC, DACs, ADCs, PLLs, DLLs and SYNDACs. The PLLs, for example, include a built-in self-balancing clock load function that helps minimize clock skew. These high-performance PLL megacells have a clock range of 20MHz to 500MHz, yet can be operated in a power-down mode.
Samsung also provides industry leading cores such as the TLB, OakDSPCore and ARM7TDMI processors. The cores, coupled with Samsung's library of analog and mixed-signal cores provide solutions for true SOC design.
"A complete system-on-a-chip requires everything from a CPU to memory, logic and I/O," Zarrinfar said. "We intend to support all major industry standard cores and I/Os." Industry standard design tools and methodologies are supported, including leading tools from Synopsis, Cadence Design Systems, Viewlogic Systems, Mentor Graphics, Avanti, System Science, and IKOS Systems.
Packaging and Availability
Packaging options also support the high performance thrust and include high pin-count PQFPs, BGAs, and thermally-enhanced SBGAs and others that will go into high volume production at Samsung's own assembly facilities or will be obtained from industry leading packaging houses such as Anam. Products will be available in Q2, 1998.
Samsung Semiconductor
Samsung Semiconductor is a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, an $18.8 billion dollar division of the $92.7 billion, Korean-based, Samsung Group. Samsung's Semiconductor Division is the seventh largest semiconductor manufacturer and the leading producer of memory products in the world. Samsung Semiconductor's North American headquarters are located in San Jose, California. Samsung was the first company to introduce the 64-Megabit DRAM and the first fully functional 256-Megabit DRAM in 1994. In November 1996, Samsung had the world's first working silicon for the 1-Gigabit DRAM. Samsung's System LSI products, include ASICs, microcontrollers, power devices, media products and the Alpha processor.
CONTACT:
Samsung Semiconductor
Farzad Zarrinfar, 408/544-4555
fzarrin@ssi.samsung.com or
Cain Communications
Hugh Willett, 408/341-8960
Hugh-Willett@caincomm.com
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
BW0250 MAR 23,1998
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Business News Center
By Miki Shimogori
Reuters
Japan Banks' Credit Downgraded Again
TOKYO (March 24) - A leading U.S. credit rating agency sent shivers through the Japanese banking sector on Tuesday by announcing lower ratings for two major banks.
Moody's Investors Service said in its latest announcement it had cut Yasuda Trust & Banking Co Ltd's long-term senior debt rating to Ba1, or non-investment grade, from Baa2.
Moody's also cut the ratings of Mitsui Trust & Banking Co Ltd , while leaving those of Nippon Credit Bank Ltd (NCB) unchanged. The only good news from the agency was that it might raise the ratings of Chuo Trust & Banking Co Ltd .
The downgrades in the credit ratings, key gauges of a firm's financial health, backed up the view that Japan's recent scheme to inject taxpayers' money into the banking sector may be only cosmetic and cannot solve its underlying problems.
Yasuda and Mitsui were among 21 banks which will get public funds totalling some two billion yen ($15.3 million) to make themselves look healthy when they close their annual books on March 31.
More downgrades may be on the way, as leading Japanese banks such as Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank Ltd , Sakura Bank Ltd and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi are still on the rating agency's negative credit watch list.
Moody's said that it was concerned that pressure on Yasuda's asset quality might rise as Japan's economy weakened.
''The bank's financial fundamentals have been among the weakest of Japanese banks,'' said Moody's, which also cut Yasuda's long-term deposit rating to Baa3 from Baa2 but kept its short-term deposit rating at Prime-3.
Moody's shrugged off Yasuda's efforts to strengthen its capital base by obtaining financial support from firms in its Fuyo group such as Fuji Bank Ltd and from the government-backed scheme to support the financial sector.
''Nevertheless...the bank's true economic capital remains mediocre and insufficient to absorb prospective credit expenses,'' Moody's said in a statement.
It added that the financial resources of the supporting group itself had slid considerably in recent months under an adverse operating environment, suggesting the level of future support available from the group for Yasuda had been affected.
It also warned that it was highly possible that greater market discipline would be introduced after March 2001, when the nation is due to complete its Big Bang financial reforms.
Yasuda Trust quickly disputed the view, saying it would be able to cope with any impact from the domestic economic slump or external factors.
''The result and the reason for the credit downgrade are unacceptable and we very much regret this,'' Yasuda said, adding that the implementation of bad loan write-offs and asset cuts had steadily improved its financial health.
Moody's raised similar reasons for its downgrade on Mitsui Trust -- continuing pressure on its weak financial health.
''The current economic climate may add another layer of problem assets to Mitsui Trust's already weak loan quality,'' said Moody's, which lowered the bank's senior long-term debt rating to Baa3 from Baa2 and its financial strength rating rating to E, the lowest grade, from E+.
It also cut the bank's short-term deposit rating to P-3 from P-2 but kept its long-term deposit rating at Baa2.
Moody's said it kept its financial strength rating on NCB at E, and the bank's long-term debt rating at Ba1, which is non-investment grade.
NCB would continue to face formidable challenges in improving its financial fundamentals and could face further pressure from Japan's current weak domestic economy, given its high commercial real estate concentration, Moody's said. ($1-130 yen)
REUTERS Reut06:42 03-24-98
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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