1.   ASML is the third-largest manufacturer of wafer steppers, advanced photo-lithographic projection systems that are used to make microchips.

2.   Cypress, based in San Jose, California, makes microchips for a variety of applications.

3.   Georgia is adding two more corporate partners in a bid to make the state a hothouse for designing and making microchips for the telecommunications industry.

4.   In an age where others are making microchips, you are making potato chips.

5.   LSI Logic, which makes customized microchips for communications networks, typified the mix of good and bad news.

6.   Now it makes microchips.

7.   That is because most microchips are made by optical lithography, a process that uses light to carve the circuits that are etched on chips.

8.   The country needs the irrigation water to make microchips.

9.   The short-sighted belief is that people trained to make widgets cannot possibly learn to make microchips.

10.   Trouble could arise, though, if agriculturists find ways to mass-clone livestock and crops as cheaply as Silicon Valley makes microchips.