| LONDON — The speed at which Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's largest foundry, is closing the technology gap with its Taiwanese rivals is almost as fast as its finances are improving. In the commentary accompanying SMIC's interim financial results for the first half of 2004, Richard Chang, the company's chairman and CEO, pointed to increasing business from China's fabless semiconductor companies. Chang said SMIC is already offering them 0.13-micron CMOS manufacturing and would be offering 90-nm process technology in the first half of 2005. Chang said SMIC started offering the 0.13-micron process, and qualified a 90-nm process using a memory device, during the first half of 2004. "We anticipate that we will offer 90-nm process technology for logic devices in the first six months of 2005," he said in the statement. "We will continue to provide domestic fabless companies, which often use leading-edge technology and thus require higher-priced wafers, with quality services and solutions," Chang added. Chang said that six out of 31 new customers added during the first half of 2004 were Chinese fabless chip companies. "While domestic fabless companies presently represent a small amount of our revenues, we anticipate that as the infrastructure in China for integrated circuits develops and matures, domestic fabless semiconductor companies will represent an increasing percentage of our revenues," Chang said. | 
