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

To: Ian@SI who wrote (27630)	1/7/1999 11:07:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Ian, just an aside, I appreciate your using Mb, or megabit as the unit of measure for chip size, and MB, or megabyte for overall RAM, or memory size. They are the most commonly misused terms in the industry. These usages from that article about MU and the Asian semi mfr that can't meet demand are both wrong (so I guess the author doesn't know what the f*** he's talking about, hey Skeeter?). a major Asian producer of DRAMs had told distributors it was not accepting additional orders for 64-megabyte chips, indicating difficulties in meeting demand,... ''If current pricing levels for 64-megabyte DRAMs, in the low $9 range,... Re: "Now the 64Mb chip is King and the transition to 1 Gb will probably start next year." No 256 Mb in between 64Mb and 1 Gb? I've lost track. Gotta agree with the bears that MU stock price is unbelievable. DRAM is the chip type that the most companies (Asia and Japan Inc. mostly) can move in on the fastest if demand really does go up enough to make MU get enough business to justify their stock price. It's the ultimate balancing act. Tony

To: Ian@SI who wrote (27630)	1/8/1999 11:20:00 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Ian, And he forgot the fact that all equipment older than 3 years will need to be replaced, regardless of any ephemeral oversupply. They always seem to forget this. Brian

To: Ian@SI who wrote (27630)	1/9/1999 11:13:00 AM
From: PAinvestor	Respond to of 70976

Hello Ian. You are on the right track. Actually most of the capacity built by the industry was between 0.3 & 0.4 micron, designed mainly for 16meg production. That capacity became rapidly obsolete after the industry leaders began a rapid shrink to 0.25 micron and a cross over to 64meg production began. You are right, there is no excess capacity out there. You may want to check some of my posts on the MU thread for clarification of this. With shrinks, you don't need as many new fabs just retooling of existing lines, so a recovery in the equipment companies is going to be patchy at best. Capex levels are going to see growth from last year, but the equipment purchases are going to be relatively smaller as a percentage of output than they were in previous cycles, not to mention that we will probably begin to see price competition between the equipment companies themselves, something that was also absent as well. BTW, do you know how AMATs CVD biz is doing currently?