The NAND portion is from M-Systems, the Israeli IP company that was acquired by SanDisk (that was btw also founded by Israeli's). SanDisk and Tosh have a very close relationship; they're fab partners I think for NAND. So in a sense the NAND was probably provided by Tosh itself. NAND capacity dedicated to HD-DVD needs to go elsewhere.
I didn't know that Sandisk was founded by Israelis! Dr. Eli Harari, was probably born in Israel but if I recall correctly, he has been in US for quite some time and got his PhD in Solid State Physics from Princeton University and most likely was a US citizen when he founded Sandisk and more importantly he was not the sole founder of Sandisk!
Sandisk is a US incorporated company and should it matter if it is founded by someone from Israel?
I don't think they buy it from Samsung or Toshiba for obvious reasons, but they might buy it from Intel instead of Spansion. Still I also recall that Intel and MS used to back HD-DVD because as they said it was more computer friendly.
Is this premise even valid that you should not buy parts from your competitors, irrespective of lower prices?
In the link you just provided-
xbitlabs.com
Toshiba was using 1GB of DRAM from Hynix in their HD-DVD players! Shouldn't they have avoided using this component from Hynix, their competitor in NAND, and given this business to a fellow Japanese vendor Elpida? Oh, please, get this thing out of your head about not buying components from your competition. If the component meets your specs, you buy it from the lowest cost provider, period! Yes, if there is a tie, one may lean away from their competitor. |
