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Technology Stocks : California Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Fulop who wrote (152)	1/16/2000 8:46:00 PM
From: Elvis Jones	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 168

Thanks for sharing that post! Happily Long CAMD, Duke

To: James Fulop who wrote (152)	2/13/2000 3:19:00 PM
From: Alan A. Hicks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 168

Business has been very strong for passives companies including CAMD. See the recent article posted on the yahoo CAMD board (post #810 "Big Winners - Companies Making Passives"). Current trends look like about the 30% growth range for passives in general. Just based on CAMD's recent quarter thin film Integrated Passive Devices (IPDs)on silicon are probably around the 50% growth range. But the really strong acceleration in growth in CalMicro's IPDs on silicon will be driven by cell phone design wins and the adoption of chip scale IPDs. These are the two things still looming ahead that will push the growth rate up dramatically for thin film IPDs. (An industry report last year had forecast an acceleration to 113% for thin film IPDs this year I believe based on cell phone design wins and chip scale IPDs) Based on current technology trends it is only a matter of time before thin film IPDs on silicon are adopted in cell phones and other wireless devices. Even as cell phones are shrinking in size digital cell phones are expected to double the number of passive components to 1200 per phone over the next two years. According to a study by the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative passive components already outnumber ICs by 21:1 in cell phones. Passives make up 80 percent of total part count and this trend continues to grow. An important step to broader adoption of IPDs is Chip Scale packaging. Semiconductor packages of current generation IPDs are both the largest size and cost component of an IPD. Chip scale packaging eliminates the bulky package, resulting in an IPD that is roughly the size of the die. Solder bumps on the front of the chip are used to connect the IPD to the printed circuit board (PCB), eliminating the need for both wire bonding and the plastic package. Contract manufacturers are already beginning to develop the infrastructure to handle Chip Scale IPDs. Chip scale IPDs will provide a significant shift in competitive advantage over discrete passives with an 80 percent space savings for small form factor applications such as in as cell phones. In addition, Chip Scale IPDs are also expected to have as much as three times the performance level of packaged IPDs that are limited by the length of the wires associated with the package. Chip scale IPDs can support very high performance buses in telecom and networking equipment, workstations, PCs, and servers. CalMicro has already begun volume shipments to DEC for high performance servers supporting a 400 MHz bus. (I think RamBus needs to pull their head out of the clouds and take a good look at CalMicro's solutions or other busses such as DoubleDataRate RAM or others will become the mainstream solution). The technology trends are there and with a very robust market for passives in general, CAMD should be able to ride these trends for the next several years. Another very key technology that CAMD has is their unique capability to combine analog ICs with passives for power management applications in portable devices but that would take a whole other post. Bottom line: Stay focused on the big picture trends and hang on for the ride.