mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (01/10/90)
In article <143@daedalus.nsc.com> andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) writes: > >Bottom line I read is that there are no more >US companies in this market - the Japanese hold 100%. I don't recall my >source (sorry - magazine plethora) but do recall this in the context of >a Taiwanese chip vendor complaining that if Japan decided to deny him >trade, he'd have nowhere else in the world to go, and was lamenting the >lack of US manufacturers of this equipment. This was in the last week or two. What about the following US semi equipment vendors? GCA Wafer steppers including g- and i-line lenses Ultratech Wafer steppers " Genus Silicide LAM etchers Varian e-beam reticle machines ("eEBES"), also ion implanters Nanoline in-situ film thickness monitors Teradyne Laser fuse-blowing for DRAM redundancy implementation (performed in the clean room between M2 and passivation) (note: major market for these is in Japan) Applied Materials Epitaxy reactors There are dozens and dozens more; these are just a handful. -- -- Mark Johnson MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 991-0208 mark@mips.com {or ...!decwrl!mips!mark}
andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) (01/10/90)
In article <34315@mips.mips.COM>, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: > [list of US manufacturers..] > There are dozens and dozens more; these are just a handful. it was ee times. i think they ought to know. -- ........................................................................... Andrew Palfreyman andrew@dtg.nsc.com Albania before April!
rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar x615) (01/11/90)
In article <34315@mips.mips.COM>, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: > What about the following US semi equipment vendors? > > GCA Wafer steppers including g- and i-line lenses > Ultratech Wafer steppers " > Genus Silicide > LAM etchers > Varian e-beam reticle machines ("eEBES"), also ion implanters > Nanoline in-situ film thickness monitors > Teradyne Laser fuse-blowing for DRAM redundancy implementation > (performed in the clean room between M2 and passivation) > (note: major market for these is in Japan) > Applied Materials Epitaxy reactors > > > There are dozens and dozens more; these are just a handful. > -- > -- Mark Johnson Mark is right, of course. However... 1) Large asian conglomerates could buy these companies out in an instant. If Nikon can buy P-E,.... 2) The way US business law is written (esp. Delaware law), the companies have little defense against a 2 or 3x share price buyout. Big players can easily afford this. 3) The way US Congress acts, US business law will not change soon. 4) The way US Do[CDEL...] act, there will be no push to disallow certain technologies from foreign ownership. Assuming foreign ownership is bad, of course. Is it? Rob -- Rob Peglar Control Systems, Inc. 2675 Patton Rd., St. Paul MN 55113 ...uunet!csinc!rpeglar 612-631-7800 The posting above does not necessarily represent the policies of my employer.
mdeale@sargas.acs.calpoly.edu (Myron Deale) (01/12/90)
In article <483@berlioz.nsc.com> andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) writes: >In article <34315@mips.mips.COM>, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: >> [list of US manufacturers..] >> There are dozens and dozens more; these are just a handful. > >it was ee times. i think they ought to know. >-- >Andrew Palfreyman andrew@dtg.nsc.com Albania before April! I only quoted that Moto was using a Nikon machine. EE Times has had other articles / industry news, about SEMAtech grumblings and such. SEMAtech is worried. I'm keeping my eye out. There seems to be a consistent theme developing however. The story goes something like this: "IBM is developing technology zzz. IBM may be willing to liscense this key technology once the patents are established. IBM stands to receive royalties for a number of years. [IBM saves US bacon from Japanese incursion]." Where technology zzz for this month happens to be X-ray lithography. Last month, DRAM's. I shouldn't complain, and I'm not lauding IBM, Lord forbid. Permit me an observation. It might be cheaper to buy-in to Thrifty, Circle K, 7-11, etc. [which fits TJ's theory of sub-companies]. Then suggest to board of chairmen to go where the money is, ie. Japan. So long mom-and-pop, or venda-machines. Perhaps we could export the Madison Avenue Advertising menace too. :) -Myron // mdeale@cosmos.acs.calpoly.edu #import <std.disclaimer>
dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) (01/12/90)
In article <161@csinc.UUCP> rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar x615) writes: >In article <34315@mips.mips.COM>, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: > >> What about the following US semi equipment vendors? >> [ List of US semiconductor equipment manufacturers omitted.] >> >> There are dozens and dozens more; these are just a handful. >> -- >> -- Mark Johnson > >Mark is right, of course. However... > >1) Large asian conglomerates could buy these companies out in an instant. >If Nikon can buy P-E,.... As could large European conglomerates, or large American conglomerates. The question really is, which ones want to? Which companies are willing to deal with the problems? >2) The way US business law is written (esp. Delaware law), the companies >have little defense against a 2 or 3x share price buyout. Big players >can easily afford this. There's one sure defense: don't go public. If you want to keep control, keep control. >3) The way US Congress acts, US business law will not change soon. The somewhat scary thing is that you seem to wish that it does. The sure way to make American industry weak is to protect it from the outside. In this case, the protection would be largely from capital investment, which is very important in the semiconductor business. >4) The way US Do[CDEL...] act, there will be no push to disallow certain >technologies from foreign ownership. Assuming foreign ownership is bad, >of course. Is it? In a perfect world, nobody would care what the allegience of the owner would be, because there would be no allegiences. In a less-than-perfect world, it still doesn't matter that much. >Rob Peglar Control Systems, Inc. 2675 Patton Rd., St. Paul MN 55113 >...uunet!csinc!rpeglar 612-631-7800 This strays quite a ways from comp.arch towards sci.econ stuff. (Both in content and tone.) I'll try not to say more. -- Craig Jackson dricejb@drilex.dri.mgh.com {bbn,axiom,redsox,atexnet,ka3ovk}!drilex!{dricej,dricejb}
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (01/13/90)
I think he meant that "there are no more U.S. companies making lithography machines". Isn't lithography technology central to the process of shrinking circuitry ?
mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (01/13/90)
$$ What about the following US semi equipment vendors? $$ GCA Wafer steppers including g- and i-line lenses $$ Ultratech Wafer steppers " $$ LAM etchers In article <76700108@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >I think he meant that "there are no more U.S. companies making >lithography machines". Isn't lithography technology central to the >process of shrinking circuitry ? But GCA and Ultratech *are* lithography machines. Just to bring an element of concreteness into the discussion, the mask levels of the R6000 and R3000 microprocessors are aligned and exposed using Ultratech (made-in-the-USA) steppers. Of course, not every fab that builds these parts is outfitted with Ultratech steppers (some may be GCA or perhaps Nikon), but it is certainly true that N>0 of the R6000 / R3000 fabs do use Ultratech exposure machines. Disclaimer: I don't sell, buy, or use steppers and I have no affiliation with Ultratech, GCA, Nikon, Perkin-Elmer, or MITI. -- -- Mark Johnson MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 991-0208 mark@mips.com {or ...!decwrl!mips!mark}
gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) (01/16/90)
In article <7375@drilex.UUCP> dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) writes: >In article <161@csinc.UUCP> rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar x615) writes: >>3) The way US Congress acts, US business law will not change soon. [ with respect to protection from foriegn buyouts ] >The somewhat scary thing is that you seem to wish that it does. The sure >way to make American industry weak is to protect it from the outside. >In this case, the protection would be largely from capital investment, which >is very important in the semiconductor business. >This strays quite a ways from comp.arch towards sci.econ stuff. (Both >in content and tone.) I'll try not to say more. I agree that this is straying, so I'll make a quick comment on this, and then head off in a direction that should be more relevant. Whether foriegn ownership is good or bad depends on how the foreign run companies behave. If they gut the company after buying it, keeping only things like sales and support networks and final assembly plants, and move all the design and planning tasks back to their home country, or they bought it just to eliminate the competition, it is a bad thing. Watching after your own interests is not protectionism. Yesterday, Adam Smith's Money world was on the topic of Supercomputers, and whether Japan's targeting of this market represents a serious threat to the technological leadership of the US. All the computer industry people they had on thought it is a very serious threat, and that it is possible that if this market is lost, the rest of the computer technology markets are likely to go too. My own oppinion is that the Japanese are still fighting WWII in the economic arena, not very far fetch when you consider that in both cases it is the leaders of the powerful corporations that are/were pressing the issue. But I continue to digress, what I want to as this forum is whether supercomputers are that important, and whether the US is really in danger from the Japanese strategy. I suspect that the danger is not in the super-computer area, but instead in basic technologies (fabrication, lithography, etc.). It has already been suggested that the super-computer market is in trouble from "killer micros," and that it will be more and more difficult for the super-computer people to find enough perfomance to justify the cost differentials. On the show they suggested that the closing of ETA was a very short sighted action, that they didn't even give their product a chance to be completely developed. Maybe their isn't room for as many players as have entered this market, i.e. killer micros have and/or will reduce the size of this market even if they can't eliminate it. The most basic question here is really whether the super-computer market will continue to grow enough to support all the companies in it. My thinking is that current super-computer architectures will become available on just a few chips (or one) within the decade, and the leading edge for extremely compute intensive jobs will move to machines with radically new architectures (TMI's connection machines maybe?). Gerry Gleason