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

To: Ian@SI who wrote (29412)	4/7/1999 4:39:00 PM
From: Henry Eichorszt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Taiwan Wafer Foundries See Production Value Rise in March April 7, 1999 (TAIPEI) -- Taiwan's wafer foundry makers have stepped up production to meet the strong growth in demand for their services from integrated device manufacturers. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., which reported a 90-95 percent utility rate for its 8-in. production lines and 85 percent for its 6-in. equipment in March, estimates an annual growth of 23.7 percent in production value in the month. Both United Microelectronics Corp. and Holtek Microelectronics Corp. estimate a modest increase of 5-10 percent in production value in March, influenced by an electricity black out and annual maintenance break at certain factories. The two companies' available production lines have been operating at full tilt since February. Both UMC and TSMC are planning to expand production lines to meet the growing demand. Acer Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc. (formerly known as TI-Acer Inc.) will begin providing wafer foundry services for Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. in June this year. Monthly output of the contract is targeted at 10,000 units. Acer has obtained 0.22 micron technology from the Japanese company, and will introduce 0.2 micron technology by the end of the year. Acer's monthly wafer foundry production currently stands at 27,000 units, and it is set to reach 35,000 units in December. The company also churns out 400-500 units of 64Mb DRAM chips with 0.28 micron technology every month. Acer executives indicated that the company plans to balance the percentages of memory chip products and logic IC products in the second half of 2000 in order to minimize operational risk. However, its memory chip products will still account for 80 percent of its output this year. Acer now has technologies transferred from Fujitsu, International Business Machines Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc.. It is the largest DRAM chip producer in Taiwan. (Commercial Times, Taiwan) <Visit News Center for more Asian news.>