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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Beltran who wrote (5335)	5/8/1998 8:24:00 AM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 10921

sorry to interrupt the most interesting geopolitical / economical discussion with some direct semi info... ... "The chip industry is cyclical; however, the long-term trend is one of impressive growth," said SIA President George Scalise. "We have enjoyed a 17-percent compound annual growth rate from 1959 through 1997. Likewise, we're optimistic that sales will return to historical growth patterns in 1999 as unit demand continues to increase, and supply and demand come into better balance." The SIA will release the mid-year World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) forecast in June, a three-year sales projection that will include 1998 year-end estimates. Even the lowest year-end estimate already released by some companies, 5 percent, would bring 1998 sales to approximately $145 billion -- a new all-time high. ... Japan microchip makers plan huge System LSI investment May 8, 1998 Source: Kyodo Kyodo: TOKYO, May 7 (Kyodo) _ Four of Japan's main microchip makers are planning combined investments of 800 billion yen by the end of the year 2000 to boost manufacturing capabilities for a next-generation ''system large-scale integrated circuits (System LSI)'' chips used for multimedia, according to company officials. The four companies hoping to boost profits from System LSI chip manufacturing are NEC Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. Chip divisions at these companies have taken a beating in recent years from falling prices of computer memory chips and are pinning high hopes on the sale of value-added System LSIs, industry sources said. NEC envisages investing some 300 billion yen in the System LSI business by the end of the year 2000, NEC officials said. Its next-generation System LSI chips will feature electronic circuit widths as thin as 0.18 micrometer, the officials said. One micrometer is one-1,000th of a millimeter. The targeted line width compares with the current thinnest circuit width of 0.25 micrometer as found in the present generation of System LSI chips, they said. NEC will begin sample shipments of the next-generation System LSI chips in October and is planning to manufacture 2 million units a month starting next year using plants in Yamagata and Kumamoto prefectures, they said. System LSI chips combine a microprocessor, a dynamic random access memory chip and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and can either be mass-produced or custom-made in accordance with customers' needs. They are installed on multimedia and other advanced high-tech gadgets. Toshiba plans to spend some 300 billion yen to manufacture next-generation System LSI chips, Toshiba officials said. Mitsubishi Electric said it plans to arrange for its group of companies to annually manufacture some 120 billion yen worth of next-generation chips by fiscal 2000, adding that a capital outlay for the project will exceed 100 billion yen. Hitachi officials said the company plans to mass-produce ASIC chips with circuit widths of 0.18 micrometer starting at the end of the year at its plant in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, at an investment cost of some 100 billion yen.