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

To: davesd who wrote (23842)	9/5/1998 7:46:00 PM
From: Big Bucks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

DAVE, WELCOME BACK!!!!!!! Were you in a coma or something. I attempted to solicit a response from you about 2 months ago but your last post was sometime in April if I recall. In a nut shell: Industry sucks, outlook sucks, excess capacity will take 12-18 months before demand catches up with production capacity. NO NEW FABS announced, Starting to see chip fab closures especially in DRAM, Nothing overly positive going forward for at least a year. 300mm on hold for 2-3 years. Starting to see signs of consolidation in the chip business, Micron bought/financed TI's Dram biz. Layoffs in the semi-equip industry, AMAT just axed 2000 last week on weak sales/growth expectations. Much more. Get some money together, Should be like shooting fish in a barrel within 1-2 months. Our prognostications of Aug/Sept/Oct/Nov of '97 concerning the state of the industry and semi's are all coming true!! Imagine that!! Regards, BB

To: davesd who wrote (23842)	9/5/1998 8:30:00 PM
From: Big Bucks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Dave, New technologies are just emerging and leading state-of-the-art is pushing 0.18uM device structures with 0.13 - 0.15uM devices on the horizon in 2 years. CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization) (precision film grinding) is hot as is copper deposition to replace aluminum for leading edge devices which will support clock speeds over 1Ghz and 1.8v operating voltages. EUV and DUV (extreme and deep UV) lithography as well as Xray lithography and high density inductive ot transformer coupled plasma etching is hot and gaining momentum for sub 0.25uM features. Lots of new and innovative technologies at the leading edge. Foundries and Fabs are doing device shrinks on 200mm wafers and will continue to do so thru the 0.18uM device levels. Looks like fabs will selectively buy new technologies and replace older "outdated" equipment to push their 200mm fab investments beyond 2000. Chip manufacturers are conserving available monetary resources and producing in high quantity to help "weather" the downturn which is suppressing prices and profitability. Excess capacity exists in nearly every commodity chip sector and "System on a chip" designs are becoming more functional and cheaper relative to discreet chipsets. Pricing pressure on all chip fronts as competition is heating up to gain market share at the expense of the competitors. As fabs close down there is more "used" equipment available at cheap prices relative to new equipment. Asia is extremely bearish and those economies are reeling from currency devaluations and deflation and lack of $$$ borrowing due to many companies being deep in financial trouble/debt. US companies are starting to feel depressed earnings growth in response to currency devaluations overseas as US products are now more expensive and capital is not available for fab expansion at this time. BB