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To: AK2004 who wrote (3647)	8/4/2000 11:12:40 AM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Albert, I agree with Charles that "There is no real "cycle" for CPU chips." I think the cyclical phenomenon that is attributed to semis is mostly about DRAMs, for which there are many large, powerful, international vendors that are capable of producing essentially the same chips. The international part is important because, in the past, there has been alleged (or actual) dumping of DRAMs by some of the companies across the big pond, which severely reduced prices in previous bad cycles. In the X86, and future evolutionary designs, CPU market (call it Intel and AMD and get it over with), there isn't nearly the possibility of overproducing and dumping. 2 companies only, both US (can't think of a good additional reason for that one) make it far less likely to have a big oversupply problem and dumping, as is possible in DRAM. JMO of course, Tony

To: AK2004 who wrote (3647)	8/4/2000 11:19:59 AM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Albert, <that is not true at all. Even if we agree on a strong average growth over the nearest future that does not imply that it is non-cyclical. Simple example is us economy which got healthy average growth and will continue to grow yet there are so called "cycles". > If you are saying the growth is not smooth, I agree but that is different from saying something is cyclical. One way to check if the x86 market has been cyclical is to see what the standard deviation to the growth was in the last 10 years. My bet is it is somewhere within 3-5% (on a base of about 20%). Hardly cyclical. On the other hand 3-5% variation on a consumer/commodity company growing at 8-10% a year could be called cyclical. Another way to look if the market is cyclical is to look at ASPs. x86 ASPs have varied less than 20% in the last decade. Lot of cyclical products have much more dramatic price fluctuations. A large part of this can be attributed to Intel being a near monopoly but that does not change the basic argument. Chuck