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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (36593)	7/28/1998 9:35:00 AM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53903

From EE Times, the line widths of Samsung and others. Story is dated 02 Feb 98. techweb.com Excerpt: One factor may be the industry's ability to squeeze more production out of existing capacity. Using 0.25-micron process technology on 8-inch wafers boosts the number of 16-Mbit raw dice per wafer to about 1,000, compared with about 400 with the 0.4- or 0.5-micron process used earlier. Processing costs remain roughly the same, at about $1,600 to $1,800 per wafer. Samsung plans to announce its super-shrink 16-Mbit part soon, small enough to put about 1,000 dice on an 8-inch wafer, said Yoon Woo Lee, president of Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division. Most of Samsung's capacity has been upgraded with additional deep-ultraviolet steppers, he said, giving Samsung 0.25-micron capacity in Austin, Texas, as well as at three fabs at its Kihung complex near Seoul. Hyundai Electronics will convert two existing fabs to 64-Mbit production this year. Newer steppers, with deep-UV laser sources, are the only significant equipment upgrade required, one source said. Chi Luk (Lucky) Kim, vice chairman of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, said Korea's semiconductor exports "hit bottom" in 1997 and will increase slightly this year on stronger prices, particularly for synchronous DRAMs. PC servers and high-end desktops will boost demand for 64-Mbit DRAMs this year, and bit-price crossover between the 16-Mbit and 64-Mbit densities will occur in the second quarter, Kim said at a press conference in Seoul during the recent Semicon Korea show. ~~~ This must have been the reason for yesterday's strength. BUSINESS 7/27/98 Intel Slashes Prices By Up To 31% On Pentium II, Celeron Chips NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Intel Corp., which has been slashing costs to adjust to strong competition and the rising popularity of cheaper personal computers, Monday announced price cuts of up to 31% on desktop PC chips. Experts say at least two more price cuts from the semiconductor bellwether are expected later this year. The company already cut prices on its high-end Pentium IIs back in April and June. But Intel expects demand to increase as PC makers continue to clear out their inventories and begin to build new machines again, which should help component suppliers. The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker is slashing the price of its 300-megahertz Pentium II by 31% to $209, from $305 in June. The 300-megahertz version of its Celeron processor, a lower-cost, slower chip, will drop 30% to $112, from $159, and the 266-megahertz version is set to decrease 19% to $86 from $106. The prices apply when chips are bought in batches of 1,000. Intel also said the price of its two fastest chips, the 350- and 400-megahertz Pentium IIs, will fall 18% to $423 and $589, respectively, from their June levels. The latest round of cuts also are designed to better position the company as the important back-to-school season nears. The price cuts on Intel's older lines follow its announcement last week that it would speed the introduction of the successor to its low-end Celeron chip. The company is ahead of schedule on developing two new chips that will rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s K7 chip. The new Intel chips, code-named Cascades and Coppermine, will be built with circuitry widths of 0.18 micron - about 1/550th the size of a human hair, and will introduced some time next year. Coppermine is a Pentium II chip aimed at desktop and laptop computers, it said. Cascades will run higher-performance workstations, which are used in graphics-intensive computer animation or scientific work. Intel last week declined to say how fast the chips are but indicated they would be significantly above 400 megahertz. It said development of the chips is moving ahead of schedule, so they will be in production in the first half 1999 rather than the second half, as previously expected. The competition between Intel and rival AMD has been heating up lately, particularly after AMD announced it would use Motorola Inc.'s manufacturing process to develop a copper version of its K7 semiconductor, an important advance in making significantly more powerful computer chips. The move is expected to help AMD gain ground on Intel. ~~~snipped~~~