All this drives demand for chips and for the equipment that makes them. The mood will be very upbeat. That cuts costs enormously and boosts efficiency. His company, the biggest in the field, is announcing on Monday what it said was the biggest product announcement in the history of the chip-making equipment industry. Applied will announce 21 new systems supporting more than 80 applications for manufacturing chips on the larger silicon wafers.
Growth is strong.
The trade group's president, George Scalise, cited strong PC sales and demand for cell phones and wireless communications infrastructure. Demand has been particularly strong for dynamic random-access memory chips, or DRAMs, and prices for the chips, traditionally volatile, have been rising in recent months. Also selling briskly, in addition to microprocessors to power PCs and computer servers, are digital signal processors and flash memory chips, both of which are used in the latest cell phones. Billat said that in addition to the 300-mm chipmaking products to be on show, industry watchers should also expect new materials to be touted as making chips more powerful, cheaper, smaller and more efficient. But most of the emphasis will be on 300mm machines.