CPQ really has it's fingers into lots of ventures, here is an interesting one with great potential, LCD manufacturing...
John
Screens on tap in Candescent
plant
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 20, 1998, 12:50 p.m. PT
A Silicon Valley start-up has begun building a manufacturing
facility to produce screens that will have the brightness of
traditional computer monitors but the thinness of LCD screens.
If the company's idea unfolds as planned, the "ThinCRT"
technology from Candescent Technologies will mean people can
buy cheaper, less power-hungry computers with screens that have
the best aspects of both of today's prevailing display
technologies--traditional cathode ray tubes (CRTs) used in most
desktop computers and liquid crystal displays (LCDs) used in
portables.
ThinCRTs have the brightness and rich colors of CRTs, said
company president Harry Marshall, but they're a third-of-an-inch
thick, so they would drastically cut down on the bulk of current
desktop monitors, and they use about a tenth of the power of
conventional CRTs, said Bob Ritter, senior vice president for
marketing at Candescent.
Candescent began construction about three weeks ago on a new
340,000-square-foot, $465 million manufacturing facility, or "fab," to
build the new displays, he said. Candescent also initially will sell
small screens to companies building handheld computers,
dashboard navigation computers, and test and measurement
equipment, he said. Once the company is making big screens, it
plans to sell to companies making portable computers or desktop
monitors.
How good is the technology?
Like CRTs, ThinCRTs generate light by bombarding phosphors with
electrons. ThinCRTs, though, get their electrons from tiny "field
emitters" very close to the phosphors instead of from an electron
gun more than a foot away like traditional screens.
The main competitor to ThinCRT is field emitter display (FED)
technology. Under development at various labs for the last 20 years,
FEDs have a number of technical obstacles to overcome, cautioned
Dave Mentley of the display research company Stanford Resources.
"The potential is there for CRT-like performance," Mentley said, but
the companies working on FEDs have had only limited success so
far.
One of Candescent's competitors is PixTech, which thus far is
selling only small, monochrome FEDs, Mentley said. Additionally,
Motorola has a hush-hush project in Tempe, Arizona, that already
has a big factory with $100 million or $200 million worth of
equipment inside.
Success for Candescent will hinge on "their ability to execute a
low-cost, high-volume manufacturing process," Mentley said.
U.S. location is a bold move
Building a fab in the U.S. is an "extremely bold" move, Mentley said.
Currently, the biggest flat-panel display factories are in Japan or
South Korea, countries with expertise in high-volume, precision
manufacturing.
Candescent got its start with help from Hewlett-Packard, which
owns a non-majority stake in Candescent. In addition, computer
monitor giant Sony contributed $50 million in a deal two weeks ago
to help bring its expertise to Candescent's operation, Marshall said.
Sony will eventually get a license to manufacture ThinCRTs and has
an option to manufacture at Candescent's facility.
Other investors in Candescent include Compaq Computer, Bankers
Trust, J.P. Morgan, and Citicorp. The company also won $11 million
from the San Jose City Council, most of that a $10 million loan
incentive against property taxes, Marshall said.
According to Candescent, there are seven flat-panel display
manufacturing plants in the U.S., but they all are based on pieces of
glass much smaller than that Candescent will use. All 26 plants that
build with the largest size of glass are in Asia, said Candescent
spokesman Stewart Hough.
Candescent, founded in 1991, currently has 300 employees but
expects to employ about 800 when the factory is fully operational.
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