John - I am not sure what Fluent, FDI, or Polyflow bring to the financial bottom line. I have played with demos of Fluent and FDI and found them to be good fluid codes however, they are very expensive, and the time to solve is unreasonable for most things I do.
For instance, the time (thus money) to solve for the thermal resistance of the FanSink (tm) on the Intel OverDrive is orders of magnitude greater that to simply make a few, test, redesign, make a few more, etc. The prototyping avenue does require that the engineer have a decent grasp of thermodynamics, whereas the code avenue does not. The code method needs to make a few as well in order to confirm results.
I do not know the particular financial position or capabilities of Aavid, thus cannot advise you about buy/sell timing. I can tell you again about the basic business, which is extruding and other types of forming. There is not much magic there. I think the recent boom of heat sinks is what prompted the company to go public. Just remember that there are a lot of companies that do (or can do) what Aavid is doing. Try to find what Aavid is doing that other CANNOT.
Just curious about the company in general, I do not have any special interest. I have known them for 14-15 years. I have talked with the thermal gurus within, and on occasion have specified some of their heat sinks for less demanding applications.
Good luck,
daniel lee thomas
ps - check out Interdigital Communications Corporation (IDC), I believe they have a very bright immediate future. Could be a teenager by years end. |
