Chi,
Adaptec is a chip supplier to the disk drive industry. Integration of
IC's is a big deal in disk drives, it's been going on for years and
will continue until it's all on one chip. Take a look at the history
of Adaptec disk drive IC's if you don't believe me: their latest chip,
the AIC-5460, integrates a DSP, servo logic, an ATA/ATAPI interface,
buffer manager, and disk formatter, all of which were individual chips
in years past.
The next big integration step is the read channel. A major competitior
in this market, TI, has acquired SSI, another channel company, to get
this technology. Adaptec had to buy ADI's channel technology to stay
in the game.
I also disagree with your assertion that this is "not a very profitable area". This is flat out not true. The PTS business unit of Adaptec contributes greatly to Adaptec's sales and profits both. Furthermore, the high volumes in these parts contribute to lower fab costs on the chips that go in their SCSI cards. |
