Applied Materials Positioned For Leadership in Supporting Chip Industry Movement to 300mm Technology.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 1999--

Company's Extensive 300mm Equipment Development Enables

Industry to Improve Productivity and Performance with

Larger Wafers, Copper and 0.13 Micron Technologies

Applied Materials, Inc., the world's largest supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, is well positioned to lead the industry in supplying the most advanced, high-productivity, 300mm wafer fabrication systems to customers as they transition to this new technology in their fabs. The company already has more than 60 distinct 300mm products specifically designed to support this transition.

"As a pioneer in the development of 300mm technologies, Applied Materials is delighted by our customers' recent announcements of plans to build 300mm fabs," said Dr. Dan Maydan, president of Applied Materials. "We've clearly demonstrated that we are prepared to provide them with the equipment needed to improve their productivity in bringing more powerful, lower cost chips to consumers."

Applied Material's 300mm products encompass technologies for both transistor level processing and the complex, multi-level interconnect structures that are likely to use copper conducting materials and new-generation dielectrics (insulators). For example, Applied Materials recently announced the Electra(TM) family of copper-based systems for barrier/seed layer deposition, copper electroplating and copper CMP, all available for 300mm wafers. The company's EPIC (Equipment and Process Integration Center) facility in Santa Clara, California, will soon include a complete 300mm equipment set for interconnect and front end process integration; many of these technologies are already installed in the facility.

"We've worked closely with many customers for more than four years to develop 300mm systems for all of our primary technologies. All of our latest products have been designed with 300mm wafer capability and with process technologies that are extendible to 0.13 micron device geometries and beyond. Applied Materials has already shipped more than twenty 300mm systems to customers in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Korea," noted Dr. Maydan.

In addition to processing more than 500,000 wafers during its product development activities, the company has processed tens of thousands of 300mm wafers for customer and consortia services over the past two years.

Applied Materials has been shipping 300mm systems to customers for more than two years, including multiple systems to SC300, the Infineon (Siemens)/Motorola 300mm production fab in Dresden, Germany, where the systems have been operating at high levels of reliability and productivity. These systems include plasma etch, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD) and high temperature film products, as well as state-of-the-art wafer inspection and CD-SEM equipment.

The 300mm transition provides chipmakers with the ability to produce semiconductor devices with more advanced performance, yet at lower overall cost. To meet this challenge, Applied Materials' latest generation of 300mm systems focuses on maximizing process technology and productivity to handle rapidly shrinking geometries and new materials, such as copper and low k dielectrics. These systems are specifically designed to increase output and reduce net operating cost in order to achieve customer goals of die cost reduction of 30 percent or better per unit area as compared to manufacturing on 200mm wafers.

Applied Materials, Inc. is a Fortune 500 global growth company and the world's largest supplier of wafer fabrication systems and services to the global semiconductor industry. Applied Materials is traded on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol "AMAT." Applied Materials' web site is www.appliedmaterials.com.