Jock, >>>"But Grand Poobah or Tony
Viola had an interesting comment about LSI in an upturn. He said that during an
upturn in the semi cycle, LSI would benefit much more than the PLD guys simply
because potential customers would be much more likely to want to spend the
additional bucks for the sort of hard wiring products that LSI offers rather than the
PLDs simply because there would be more product to be sold and also the need
for greater differentiation among competitors."<<<
That was GP. I also thought that way, but a guy that contributes (mightily ) to SI said once that things can be moving so fast that the systems design or computer company never get around to converting the existing PLDs to ASICs. If it works, don't fix it, even if it costs more leaving it the way it is. Instead, they are onto new products design, again built around PLDs. How else can you explain the sizes of the revenues of Altera and Xilinx, as compared to LSI.
Obviously, some companies do go back and get the logic converted over to ASIC, or system on a chip, or whatever you call it.
I posted earlier that Symbios got themselves designed in on Intel's newest server motherboard, run by Xeon chips. That's great news fro Symbios, LSI, as the word is that those new mobo based servers are really taking off. Unfortunately for Intel, word of a bug surfaced in their second Xeon chipset, the 450 MHz one due out in October (now 1Q99). However, that shouldn't impact the first Xeon based mobo/server.
BTW, did I post that Symbios has at least two vendor of the year awards under their belt, one from Compaq (I think)?
Symbios is good.
Tony |
