Business Notes RESEARCH

"This is a home run, believe me," exulted Texas Governor Bill Clements. "This is a great day for Texas!" The beleaguered oil-patch state has had relatively few of those lately, but last week it got a potentially Texas-size economic spur. A consortium of 14 U.S. semiconductor firms chose Austin over competing sites in 34 states for its research center, which will spend an estimated $250 million annually. The consortium, called Sematech, for Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology, includes fierce rivals that have joined forces on chip research in the face of bruising foreign competition. Austin's coup could help make it a Sunbelt Silicon Valley. The capital had $ already attracted a research center for a similar consortium, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp., which is conducting research in computer architecture and software design.