SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : IDTI - an IC Play on Growth Markets
IDTI 48.990.0%Mar 29 5:00 PM EST
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  
To: flickerful who wrote (7728)4/6/1998 3:09:00 AM
From: Rob S.  Read Replies (4) of 11555
 
This has been talked about by Halla repeatedly in the past and should have little immediate effect on IDTI, IMO. The speculation about a glut in Pentium class chips and a price war latter this year might. One of the reasons IDTI decided to use IBM as a fab partner was to gain access to their Blue Logic capability for doing SOC. NSM has mounted the most agressive effort and is out in front of the pack with this effort. However, they do not have on-chip memory capability except for the ubiquitous cache. For placing large blocks of memory, something that will be needed in the future to truly bring the PC to SOC, NSM will probably need to be at the 0.18 um process stage and may have to buy or partner to gain access to the technology.

IDTI should be thinking about doing SOC and should have some designs on the drawing borad or at leasst in the planning stage. Two or three years out there will likely be a storm swell of activity in SOC. The advantages are clear; by going to 0.25 um and lower you can cram so much stuff on the chip that SOC becomes practical. Then you have far less packaging costs and can run everything at uP clock rates without a lot of troublesome and costly packaging, like the slot 1. The first generation of SOC devices from NSM are likely to be lower performance than standard discrete solutions. But as this evoloves you can expect the performance to increase dramatically and total system pricing to come down. Do away with large MBs, separate logic and I/O chips, use a unified L2/DRAM memory architecture, and do away with a lot of the connectors and total cost of an X86 system will be driven down. Similar things are happening in the RISK camp. LSI and several other companies have capabilites and plans to do SOC. SGS has some eforts under way to do low-end X86 SOC chips. NSM to my knowledge is the only X86 SOC guy out there that is going to have parts that will be suited for the sub $1000 and sub $700 Pentium class markets.

IDTI will need to enter this race by the year 2000 to stay competitive in the low end PC and X86 device market, IMO. Maybe this is what they have in mind doing with IBM.
Report TOU ViolationShare This Post
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  

HomeMailHotSubjectMarksPeopleMarksKeepersSettings
Terms Of UseContact UsCopyright/IP PolicyPrivacy PolicyAbout UsFAQAdvertise on SI
© 2026 Knight Sac Media.  Data provided by Twelve Data, Alpha Vantage, and CityFALCON News