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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: alburk who wrote (18007)	1/7/2001 8:05:52 PM
From: Ausdauer	Respond to of 60323

Andy, you asked... Isn't it important to differentiate removable high density flash from embedded? This article does not seem to address the different markets that these products play in. The manufacturers are not interchangeable are they? What evidence is there of a slowdown in CF? I don't think there has ever been much precision in this regard. All flash seems to get lumped together regardless of origin or end-user application. I am not sure that ATMEL or AMD can even manufacture a 64 megabyte flash chip. In fact, I am certain they cannot. Perhaps they have megabyte and megabit mixed up, another common mistake. Can anybody confirm that they have "megabyte" and "megabit" all backwards in the article that was posted? I cannot think of an embedded cellphone application that requires 128 megabytes of storage, for example. It would almost certainly disadvantage the manufacturer based on price alone. With regard to interchangeability, I think most engineers try to incorporate a universal pin connector for embedded flash. That allows them to choose from several vendors. In this regard it would seem that embedded flash can be easily switched from manufacturer to manufacturer. SanDisk will have an embedded flash chip and an embedded flash plus controller product. I suspect that there are different markets for both. The take home message for me is that flash is a rapidly growing subsegment of the semiconductor sector and the effects of a potential slow down on consumer spending may dampen growth in the near term. Well, at least we aren't selling into the PC market. Aus