Taiwan's DRAM nightmare

And despite confident assertions from the semi industry, it doesn't seem that anything is going to get that much better early.

Mosel-Vitelic, for example, yesterday reported big losses in the first half of this year, amounting to NT$7 billion. It sees the bottom happening in Q3, and Sharp is one of its biggest customers

Today's Pricing
TICE DIMM MODULEs
PC-133 168-pin DIMM 512M328T16C-133 512M 32Megx8, 16 Chips, 64Mx64, PC133 $50.50
256M328T8C-133 256M 32Megx8, 8 Chips, 64Mx64, PC133 $23.75
256M168T16C-133 256M 16Megx8, 16 Chips, 32Mx64, PC133 $23.75
128M168T8C-133 128M 16Megx8, 8 Chips, 16Mx64, PC133 $12.35
128M808T16C-133 128M 8Megx8, 16 Chips, 16Mx64, PC133 $12.50
64M808T8C-133 64M 8Megx8, 8 Chips, 8Mx64, PC133 $8.25

PC-100 168-pin DIMM 128M808T16C-100 128M 8Megx 8, 16 Chips, 16Mx64, PC100 $12.10
64M808T8C-100 64M 8Megx 8, 8 Chips, 8Mx64, PC100 $8.25
64M416T8C-100 64M 8Megx 8, 8 Chips, 8Mx64, PC100 N/A
32M416T4C-100 32M 4Megx16, 4 Chips, 4Mx64, PC100 $4.60

All the memory companies must be hoping against hope that Microsoft's WinXP rides to the rescue, just like Windows 95 didn't in... err 1995, when everyone stocked up on memory in the hope of a big bonanza that turned out not to happen. µ