Hi E! Kissin' cousins is right. IOM looks like they have
a good idea here. LSI's DCAM is a pretty big deal I think.
If I remember correctly, when they made their initial
announcement LSI said they were in talks with, was it,
6 out of 10 of the leading digital camera companies. Should
definitely be a huge thing going forward for LSI.
Something of interest - relates to LSI indirectly but it
does show that the Alteras of the world are aggresively going after
the gate array market. From an interview with ALTR's
Smith:
"Yes, but we [XLNX & ALTR - shane bogus ed.] are not taking a limited segment of the pie and trying to take it from each other. We are both
looking at expanding into a much bigger segment of the marketplace. If we have products that can replace those then that is a
much easier growth opportunity.
"Why would a gate array user convert to programmables? If they are at the same price, nobody would use gate arrays;
everybody would use programmables for the time-to-market advantage, for the flexibility advantage, for the inventory
advantages. They are not the same price, so our job is to drive the price down as rapidly as we can. That is what we have
been focused on for the past four or five years.
"I think with the Flex 6000 family that we recently introduced we are there. The Flex 6000 family is equivalent in cost per
gate to a gate array with about 20,000 gates. If you go to that segment of the market, you find that companies like LSI Logic
don't play there anymore. They have moved upscale. Not because of technology and not because they can't compete, but
there is a whole different set of forces going into play here.
"I think the next big challenge for us is to make sure that our chips can run at the system speeds that people want to run and
essentially keep up with Intel in the microprocessor game as it drives system performance higher and higher. Managing the
inter-relationships between the forces is very complex, but if we can get that right we will be successful in replacing the gate
arrays."
---
I like the reference to "upscale"! Park Avenue, that's us!
(company not stock)
Re: "there is a whole different set of forces going into play here"
I wish he'd have elaborated on this but I think basically LSI has indicated all along that COREWARE is the way they intend to go. Still I thought LSI did not like the competition in the gate array segment and, further, wanted to put their capacity to better use. No biggie I guess. I'm intrigued by the "not because they can't compete" thing. |
