Mr. Parodi: Tegal is a global semiconductor equipment company specializing in plasma etching of the 'difficult to etch' new materials. Tegal provides its customers' enabling process solutions using our patented plasma etching systems and processes. Our target markets are customers using 'difficult to etch' new materials in the semiconductor, III-V compound semiconductor, MEMS, data storage and related industries. Our plasma etch systems and unique processes are used to manufacture integrated circuits, for a broad spectrum of applications. These devices range from the new non-volatile memory chips such as Ferro-electric Random Access Memory (FeRAM) and Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) for smart cards and embedded memory, to the new wireless chips used in all the ubiquitous personal device applications that we see emerging in the marketplace. Tegal has been in business 29 years, we design and manufacture our products and processes in Petaluma, California, and install, service and support our systems worldwide. We have more than 75 customers and an active installed base of approximately 1,500 systems worldwide.
TWST: Who makes up your customer base?
Mr. Parodi: Tegal is very fortunate to have a very broad customer
base. It reads like the Who's Who and includes a number of the
well-known semiconductor companies in each of our targeted niche
markets. For example, in the FeRAM non-volatile memory market, we
have customers such as Matsushita, ROHM, Toshiba, NEC, Sony, Oki,
ST Microelectronics, Motorola, Hyundai and Samsung. Some of our
customers in the opto-telecom, datacom market sector are Nortel
Networks, RF Microdevices, Anadigics, Lucent, MA/Com, TRW,
Motorola, Advanced Wireless Semiconductor, CSMC, Opto Tech, Win
Semi and others. And in the MRAM sector, another non-volatile
memory technology, NEC, for example, is a customer. In the MEMS
market we are pleased to have customers like Analog Devices,
Bosch, Fuji Film, Seiko Epson and Walsin Lihwa to name a few. In
the mainstream semiconductor market we have a number of the same
customers I already mentioned in addition to others such as AMS,
On-Semi, Delco, EMM, International Rectifier, Linear Technology,
and Fairchild as well as others. All these customers are in
production using our systems to etch a vast array of products,
ranging from discrete power devices to very complex logic and
analog circuits. So you can see we have a very broad customer
base that we address with our product lines and unique process
capabilities.
Tickers included in this excerpt: TGAL
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