This seems to be a very good purchase to me for at least two reasons. One, it seems to be a great buy financially. Two, it really augments LSI's capabilities in the disk drive area. I have always felt they were so weak in that area as to not be a viable competitor on a large scale, but this certainly changes that.
However...it would seem to me that they are now going to be a competitor of Adapatec's in SCSI, which will not be easy. I haven't followed that market very closely for a while. However, another of my investments, CRUS, tried to compete with Adaptec in SCSI controllers a few years back and got their butt kicked. CRUS of course is the market leader in IDE controllers, so they are no small fry in the disk drive world.
Looks like Symbios is in a similar position to LSI as far as manufacturing capability, maybe just slightly behind, since their 0.25-micron fab is ramping up to volume in early 1999 while Gresham is ramping up this fall. I don't know much at all about their reputation in the industry as far as manufacturing goes. Here's the excerpt from their website regarding the fab:
FORT COLLINS, COLO., April 20, 1998--An industry leader in delivering innovative cell-based technologies to the electronics industry, Symbios, Inc. today announced the availability of its next generation SYM10TM 0.25æ six-layer metal CMOS ASIC technology.
The SYM10 technology, which is available now to customers wishing to start new designs, will be manufactured at the Symbios 8-inch wafer fabrication facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Volume production can be expected in early 1999.
G.P. |
