The New (Profitable) Ramtron Message Board

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Technology Stocks : The New (Profitable) Ramtron

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To: jimtracker1 who wrote (89)	10/26/2007 3:37:16 AM
From: sleupendriewer	of 647

sorry - but I don't see that like you do ... first I don't think that they realy have to spend a lot of money to expand buisness - they have to invest in mask-sets ( I would assume for the TI process this might be around $300-700k per mask set of a new device) and of course engineering wafers as said for development - but if you put that together we might - dpeneding on how straight forward they can shrink/develop - some 100k to 1 mio on new/shrinked devices. so even if they would do around 15 redesigns/enhancments (like qualifying the 256kBit 5V/3V serial devices for automotives purposes) new chips next year imo they could do that within the r&d-budget of around 20% that they mentioned ... (I think this is absolutely sufficient ...) Sadly they have not published how many wafers they can ask for at TI - but if you calculate a little bit you can see - if they only have assured a similar number of wafer starts as with TI then they might get a multiple of (4+) devices out there - so finaly if TI foundry service is up - they might be able to produce instead of 50 mio devices something like 250 mio "equivalent" devices - for sure - they will also produce devices like the 2/4MBit which might influence this ... and if I do a rough assumption/guess ;) - then I would say - with a good yield - this might translate into something like 500 to 1000 wfaerstarts per month on a 200mm line - respectively some 100 on a 300mm line - no real deal - if you compare this to the 20 to 30k that TI ha in most of their fabs ... furtheron you should keep in mind - that TI has this hybrid sourcing - where they can produce plain processed cmos wafers also in TI or UMC processes - and as chipworkx pointed out - the underlying of the FM22L16 looked like if TI has either left out some spacer processing steps or if they might have used wafers from another low cost foundry and just did the further steps which make up the piezo- and the metal layers. and for tsmc or umc right now - as far as I got their numbers right I don't see that there is friction ... anyway I think TI might be as interested as ramtron to get waferruns up and running because they will get the yield only to good results if they have throughput - in this sense I would assume that TIs and ramtrons buisness approach complement quite good right now ... where they will have to spend some money - and they also talked about it - is application engineering and sales - but I don't think this is significant ... so - I don't think/assume that they realy have a "fab" problem anymore - I would assume they have to reengineer/shrink their devices in the right way (automotive devices / small devices on the fuijitsu line, lower cost/cost sensitive "standard" and "bigger" devices on the TI line) "and get the right products out - as soon as they can" - without risking too much in the designspace ... so when they say right now they are struggling to meet market demand - I would assume the restrictions are more in the r&d and sales department to get the incoming jobs and needs fullfilled in time / as soon as possible ... when ramtron as surpassed 100 or 200 mio turnover then I think we might chat again - if they have a foundry problem - but right now I would doubt that ... just my 2 cents ...

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