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To: Allen Benn who wrote (9091)1/17/2001 1:31:12 PM
From: Victor Lazlo  Respond to of 10309
 
very interesting, Allen.
thanks
Victor



To: Allen Benn who wrote (9091)1/24/2001 7:08:04 AM
From: Michael Gaudet  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 10309
 
Here are a couple of quotes from a ML report on the release of Linux 2.4, interested in your take on it:

Not only is Linux a strong contender on the server, we
expect it to be a major player in the embedded market, too.
There is a good fit with PDAs. PDA operating systems need
to be compact, flexible, and open, with lots of utilities such as print drivers. Linux already has these, so Linux on PDAs looks like a slam dunk. Samsung’s YOPY and Agenda
Computing’s $149 PDA both use Linux. It would be
interesting to see Palm update its Palm OS to Linux, keeping
the same API so all the Palm applications continue to run.


most software, including
operating systems, middleware, and applications, will go
open source. The exception may be some vertical apps.
Open source is free, can be modified by the user, and
evolves faster than proprietary code but offers no central
point for blame or responsibility. Proprietary software is
by comparison expensive, evolves more slowly, forces
users to cede control to a single entity, and provides users
minimal flexibility. Open source has the potential to
commoditize sectors of the software world and play havoc
with business models. Even if this happens, it’s beyond
most investors’ timeframes. But be prepared.



To: Allen Benn who wrote (9091)1/24/2001 2:10:17 PM
From: Allen Benn  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 10309
 
Brian Lempel has graciously volunteered to help Peter Grossman maintain the lily pond site. I would like to extend my appreciation first to Peter for building the site, and to Brian for taking up the banner. I noticed that Brian gets his email through the Wharton Business School, so I have high hopes he can bring more to the party than just site maintenance.

I sent Brian the latest lily pond spreadsheet (along with the original version for reference), and I would expect the site to be updated soon.

When the update is complete, you will notice changes in some of the numbers, but you might also notice that I decided to drop the Digital Printers/Multifunction lily pond. Lacking evidence to the contrary (which I hoped might develop), this site fails to satisfy minimum growth rates necessary to quality as a lily pond. This has an interesting effect on the summary figures. Near-term royalties get slashed. Of course this has no impact on WIND near-term performance, because lily pond royalties do not factor into WIND’s forecasted revenues and earnings until FY 2002 according to my model. What it does do is sharply increase the apparent CAGR of lily pond royalties over the near-term. In either case, the out-year impact is negligible.

I think more attention should be paid to the relative sizes of the projected lily ponds. In particular, Server Appliances STILL is projected to be the largest lily pond in five years. This means the thread must continually verify the forecasts for this important component of WIND’s business. To put this in perspective, if all lily ponds save Server Appliances grow only 30% annually, then based mostly on this one lily pond, WIND still would be expected to earn $4 per share in four years according to my model.

So, how goes Server Appliances? Here are a few things you might have noticed lately:

Start here: developer.intel.com

Notice the paragraph that started with: “Millions of Intel® i960® I/O processors have been shipped and the Intel IOP310 I/O chipset provides a solid transition path for the many developers who are familiar with Intel i960 technology.”

There were $2 million in IOP royalties to WIND in FY 2000, in the range of about 1 million chips. This statement suggests that the expected growth for royalty-paying IOPs is occurring faster than conservatively forecasted in the Server Appliance lily pond.

Next, check out developer.intel.com
Activate the “Integrated RAID Demo” to get an informative presentation of the features of Intel’s Integrated RAID building blocks. (It should be clear that the building blocks “integrate” Intelligent IO components along with lots of other components. You should check each item on the dropdown menus in the demo. One interesting capability is the HTML Storage Console – a telltale sign of WIND’s contribution beyond IxWorks and Hardware debuggers.

What companies are buying all those IOPs? Relative to RAID, check out
developer.intel.com

In particular, notice that Dell and HP are users of Intel’s Integrated RAID building blocks. Then check out: dell.com

Is there any doubt about what building blocks Dell used to build this SAN-attached RAID box?

The successful debut of I2O technology for RAID bodes well for the iLAN market for Gigabit LANs, as this new technology begins to take hold. Understand, that Gigabit LAN has a bad habit of taking most host processors to their knees when directly attached. Offloaded TCP/IP protocol stacks become highly desirable at these speeds.

In their earnings conference call, Broadcom’s Harry Nicholas emphasized that Gigabit LANs are being implemented now, mainly as infrastructure, i.e., in servers and network devices like switches and routers. Broadcom sold 1.5 million Gigabit chipsets last year. Like Intel, Broadcom works closely with WIND with reference designs for Managed Switches, etc. Nicholas pointed out that 10/100 Ethernet perversely implemented on workstations first, with network devices following afterward with upgrades. This time, with the infrastructure going first, Gigabit is more stealth-like, but will become noticed once workstations begin to upgrade en mass later this year. (Like 10/100, most Gigabit devices will be backward compatible, making them actually 10/100/1000 Ethernet.)

If you carefully examine the Server Appliance lily pond, you will discover that server appliance royalties are set to explode with iLAN royalties, not iRAID royalties or the sale of stand-alone IOPs. The reason is that Gigabit NICs attached to servers will carry substantial ASPs, and will grow rapidly in units. The numbers for iLAN in the table are consistent with what Broadcom pointed out, in that they pertain mainly, if not solely, to servers and other infrastructure network devices. What are missing from the table are iLAN projections for workstations, with units far in excess of server units, but with lower ASPs, probably more in the range of $10 or $20.

I will correct this substantial omission once we get an indication of timing and requirements for workstation Gigabit NICs.

Allen



To: Allen Benn who wrote (9091)1/28/2001 5:42:16 PM
From: Tim Mak  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 10309
 
Question to Allen and the thread:

With InfiniBand, iRAID, and iLAN coming on strong in the near future, presumably the infrastructure for storage, web content management, and enterprise software in general will undergo substantial innovations. Who is going to benefit?

More specifically (looking for future investment opportunity):

Will BEA Systems be able to strengthen its "middleware" offerings? Will WRS extend into the enterprise SW middleware space? Has Intel picked an enterprise SW partner?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Regards.