<<The other thing I still worry about goes back my example of last week. Did Intel cede to 2mb space to SST for competitive reasons, or because they believe that the low density market itself will demand higher densities in a year or two, and they preferred to aim for that market? I know one answer to that question--some applications won't ever require more than 2 or 4 mb. But I don't really have a clear enough perception of the many uses of SST chips yet to have a feel for how the migration upward of the market will affect their volumes and margins.>>
Actually, Sam.. they ceded the pc-bios market to SSTI.. in reality, the initial incanation of their offerings were 2Mbit, but recently, they are offering 4Mbit.. I think it's a fair assumption to more correctly state that they ceded the entire 820 chipset bios market (well, greater than 90%) to SSTI.. as SSTI has built in support from AMI and Phoenix BIOS, which collectively make up the lion's share of all BIOS code designers.
<<The other thing I still worry about goes back my example of last week. Did Intel cede to 2mb space to SST for competitive reasons, or because they believe that the low density market itself will demand higher densities in a year or two, and they preferred to aim for that market? I know one answer to that question--some applications won't ever require more than 2 or 4 mb. But I don't really have a clear enough perception of the many uses of SST chips yet to have a feel for how the migration upward of the market will affect their volumes and margins.>>
Just think of it this way Sam.. any piece of consumer digital electronics that would need a place to store instructions (ie, code) could inevitably require nonvolatile memory such as SSTI NOR.. ANYTHING.. from a garage door opener to a coffee maker, to a fancy remote control.. gosh, the possibilities are ENDLESS.. and this low density segment isn't going to shrink anytime soon, I don't think.. b/c the denominator in the ratio (demand created by oodles of new products) will keep SSTI's low density in business for a long time to come.
All the best, docpaul |
