CJ (and William), as a matter of fact, I just hung up with one of my old cronies that still sells the line. I learned the following:
Actel's MX family is being very well received by engineers due to its high speed / density, low cost vs. the competitive ALTR family of products (FLEX 6K). Actel is winning "sockets". Apparently the MX family is a good alternative to ASIC's.
He did not have any specific information on how the quarter ended, but did add that apparently Q3's miss was due in part to a significant shipment of mil. spec. product not getting out. He thought it was approx. $6 million in revenue. This will be counted in Q4.
In my earlier post, I had indicated that I would like to see ACTL get into SRAM based (reprogrammable) devices. This is the "sweet spot" of the market, and is the technology that ALTR and XLNX employ. It sounds like ACTL does/will have parts that are re-programmable, but it doesn't sound like this is making much of an impact yet. However, like anything else, there are trade-offs (anti-fuse vs. SRAM). There are many many applications where reprogrammability is not a factor, and where anti-fuse is actually better suited due to speed, density and cost considerations. (Cost per gate is cheaper w anti-fuse).
Actel is the bonified leader in this technology. The only other vendor is Quicklogic, and they are a very distant second. In fact, Actel has won a law suit against Quicklogic for patent infringement.
As it turns out my buddy is an ACTL shareholder as well and felt (as do we), that it is a good value at current prices. Last I checked, looks like we're moving back towards $12.
Hope this helps.
Larry |
